


Alien Abductions

by asparagusmama



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Various Authors, Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Orion Syndicate, Undercover, child trafficking, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: In the criminal justice system, sexually based offences are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit.This is their X-File.From Sto to Orion to Trion to New York on Earth, the Doctor and her friends track abducted children and find they need assistance to rescue some of them.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	1. New York, Earth, 2012

**Author's Note:**

> Note for the American reader, I am British, and rather old, and had a very old fashioned English education in rather strict girls school with a Headmistress who thought it the 1930s not the 1980s, so this will be written in British English, and I make no apology for that – spelling, grammar, words, will be English English. However, where I write from a US person’s pov, or more importantly, in speech, if I get words or phrasing wrong, please do tell me and I will change it as soon as I can. There is also, of course, from the Doctor’s pov, the TARDIS is rather erratic and very ‘English’ in her telepathic translations, so one could decide that the Doctor is hearing Americans speak British English. But I have tried my best to research NY culture and speech rhythms, and of course, grew up with US TV, so hopefully have written pants instead of trousers, mail instead of post, etc, but some will have escaped, so please will you, dear reader, point out any errors in the US characters’ speech and thoughts.

Chelsea piers, 6.05 am November 30th

In the early hours of the morning a young Hispanic man who worked the dead shift at the food truck and coffee concession near the old warehouse left for home, his boss coming in early to relieve him. His girl was expecting and real sick, and he was so grateful to his boss. He was good like that.

Dawn was rising over the old warehouses and crumbling buildings, the polluted water lapping up to the concrete wharfs, washing broken bits of junk in along with the tide. Gulls wheeled in the skies, yelling and crying to each other, occasionally one dive-bombing into the sea, and the rising sun, which rose bright pink, a beautiful dawn. The cold air smell of salt, dirty water, and trash.

He stopped; he was sure he saw something in an old alley leading between two tall redbrick buildings. He almost decided it was none of his business, but he was sure he saw feet and legs, a woman unconscious, at the end of the alley, the legs sticking out behind a dumpster for trash. It smelt of rotting fish, and he had to kick a rat away as he came close. He squatted down to look at the poor woman.

“Shit!” he swore, reaching for his cell phone as he stretched out his arm to touch her cold form with his other hand. Didn't look like he was going to get back to Mariana early after all. The dead woman was blonde, wearing a long hooded pale coat, that was wrapped around her torso and neck, her pants were over her flat boots, and her torso a mass of bruising, snapped rainbow suspenders tied her hands behind her back.

He checked her neck for a pulse as he dialled 911.

Chelsea piers CS, 7.07am November 30th

The sun had risen and was giving a weak winter glow as Detectives Tutuola and Rollins left the car parked behind those of the ME and CSI, theirs parked behind the unis squad car, and walked up through the icy slush.

“What do we have?” Fin began to the uni guarding the scene, but just then Dr Warner yelled from behind the dumpster,

“Call a bus!”

“What the-!” Rollins shouted, running up to the supposed body and Melinda.

“What's happening?” Fin called over her shoulder.

The ME looked up at the approaching detectives. Behind then they could hear a uni call in for an ambulance. She spoke over the uni, all the while continuing to do hands on obs, even pulling out a stethoscope from her pocket.

“Seriously. I didn't have a pulse, but I've just got one, slow, thready, with an echo, like a second pulse. This is screwy, she's so cold, she should be dead, long dead, but she's breathing. Barely. Four breaths per minute, but it feels like she's hyperventilating. For her. I don't get it. She's so cold, like serious, just over 62 degrees, she should have been dead hours. Oh my God, she has two hearts!” Warner sat back on her heels with the old-fashioned stethoscope hanging limply in her hands and stared, wide-eyed, at Rollins and Tutuola, as if they could put the world back on track for her.

Just then, the supposed dead woman's eyes snapped open, “Graham!” she shouted in some kind of weird accent, before falling back into what looked, possibly, like, to the ME, a coma. But how could she tell? It could just be shock, or internal bleeding. Anything. But whatever the woman was, she was definitely one of Special Victims’ vics. Multiple rapes, vaginally and anally. Possibly orally but she would have to do a rape kit. As well as a nasty physical assault. She began to untie the woman's hands as she heard the sirens approach for the ambulance.

“Raped. Several times. Possibly more than one assailant, but I need to do the kit to be certain,” Warner said shakily, looking still at the detectives in disbelief and shock. “She should be dead,” she repeated. “She was dead, I was sure...”

Dr. Melinda Warner travelled with the vic in the ambulance, whatever the woman was, wherever she was from, she'd been raped and needed treatment and respect and probably protection from probable other departments and agencies as well as her assailants. She didn't intend to leave her.

Bemused, Tutuola, and Rollins followed in the car.

Bellevue Hospital ER, 9.37am November 30th

The first thing the vic did when she regained consciousness, some two hours after she was put in a large, white and green, side room after comprehensive medical insurance cover had been found in a black wallet, which just plain didn't make sense, but Melinda reasoned if you were some alien on a mission you'd do all you could to blend, and after Melinda had tentatively and gently, and not without a lot of scientific curiosity, done the rape kit; was scream.

It seemed to Melinda to be a long breathless, inhuman, scream. Then the vic then leap out of bed, and as she realised that she had no clothing but the open hospital gown, began to panic, demand her own clothes back, with a long, nonsensical, babble of words, and wrap herself tightly in a sheet. She then began to pace the room, looking out of the window and back at the SVU officers and doctor in the room, seemingly taking everything in shrewdly even if she still had panic in her eyes.

“I can't be here. Where am I? Seems like a hospital. Are you a doctor? No, you look like a police officer. An angry one. You are the doctor. Well, a doctor anyway. Not the Doctor, obviously. Yes. What happened? I was getting so close. New York. America. Earth. Hospital. I'm in an American hospital! Whatever you think you're doing to help; you need to stop. You'll make it worse. I've already been killed by American medical care once!”

“I haven't given you any meds, I didn't want to take the risk,” Melinda said calmly, reassuringly. The woman carried on as if she hadn't heard.

“I have to get out. My clothes, why have you taken my clothes? Ooh, that's high,” she interrupted herself as she looked out of the window. “Can't go out of the window, another officer outside the door. Am I under arrest? I wasn't doing anything, well looking, and yes, I did break in. Wait! Was I alone? Did I break in? There's something I'm forgetting!”

“Calm down Ma’am,” Amanda said. “You're not under arrest. You've been assaulted. Why don't you sit back down on the bed, Ma’am?” She'd been sitting at the back of the room waiting for the strange vic with the screwy reading to awaken, while Melinda had done the rape kit and made her comfortable, and now, watching the woman pace the room, babbling, she was getting dizzy. If the vic didn't remember the rape, had she been drugged? It was certainly the strangest response to being raped and waking up in hospital Amanda had ever seen. Also, the bruising had almost healed, it had been going through the cycle of colour change in the hour since she'd got here with Fin.

“Why are you calling me a Ma’am?” the woman almost shouted, sounding panicked “Oh yeah! I remember! I'm a woman now! And I'm in an American hospital!” She now did yell this last sentence, angry, excited, panicked, all three, Amanda couldn't tell. The woman turned to look at Warner. “I have to get out. You have to let me out!” She grabbed Warner's arms. “Give me my clothes!” she shouted. “American hospitals kill me! I've already been killed by one once. You're all idiots. Let me go!”

Amanda got up and stepped forward. “Come on darlin', let's get you back into bed,” she said, taking hold of the woman's arms and leading her away from Warner and back to the bed. “There you go sweetie, sit down,” Amanda insisted, pushing on the vic's shoulders, sounding angrier that she liked, struggling with the strange woman, trying to get the right amount of sympathy and force balanced convincingly. She went on, “I'm Detective Amanda Rollins, Manhattan Special Victims Unit. This is Dr Melinda Warner.”

“Hi. I'm a doctor, is there anything I can do to help make you comfortable?” Melinda asked, rubbing at her arms. The woman was stronger than she looked.

“Get me my clothes. And I'm the Doctor. The definitive article you might say,” the vic replied, shouting again.

“You can't have your clothes, we sent them to forensics. Doctor who exactly?” Melinda said calmly. She was worried that the strange woman had been drugged and was now in a psychotic episode, a possible alien allergic reaction to human drugs even. She glanced worriedly at Rollins. From what she had observed and heard from others, Rollins was good at telling a psychotic incident from a drugged state and anything in-between.

Amanda shook her head at Warner, as far she could tell the woman was just plum crazy weird. Or alien, if Warner's readings were to go on. Certainly, she couldn't figure out the constant monologue with sudden shouting, but she instinctively felt it might be normal for the woman. She patted the vic's shoulder gently.

“They were soaked in mud and water and some of your blood, sweetie.” Amanda added, “There's no way you could wear them, I doubt you could get them cleaned up.”

“I want them back,” she insisted, quietly, standing again, adjusting the sheet more tightly around her as she did so. Somehow the quiet insistence was more alarming than the panicked shouting. It was as if she expected clear obedience, as if it were her birth right. “The TARDIS will get them clean. Yaz helped me get my new look. Well actually, she didn't, she thinks I look like a clown. Oh no! Wait a minute! Yaz. Yaz! If they did this to me, what about her? Is she okay?” The woman's eyes went wide again with more panic. Then a sudden realisation or memory seemed to hit her and she sat down again.

“Graham!” she let out in a strangled moan. “He was with me when we found...”

“Graham?” Amanda asked. “Is he your husband?”

The Doctor looked at the detective with utter confusion. “No. He's my friend. And Ryan and Yaz. I'm worried about them all, they could have done this to Yaz. Or Ryan and Graham too. Am I being sexist now? Is that what I do now I'm female? I've had this happen to me lots of times before, so I'm being stupid and sexist. Maybe I'm judging the thugs who work for the Syndicate? Or the local gang? Has anyone else been found hurt? This is New York, what am I asking? Look, can you check? Please?” The Doctor looked into Amanda's eyes, who felt like she was looking into her very soul and rifling through her memories and thoughts. It was unsettling.

“I need to take your statement Doctor. You've been raped. Multiple times, Dr. Warner thinks. By more than one assailant.”

“Yes yes, obviously, but I'm fine,” the Doctor replied dismissively. “I'm always fine. I'm not sure about my friends. Look, can you ask?”

Amanda opened the door, and called Fin in. “She's a weird one,” she muttered, “acts like the rape was no big deal, but had some friends, and needs us to find out if they've been found injured or...”

“Well, she is a weird one, too cold, two hearts, comes back from the dead...” Fin said, shrugging.

“I can hear!” the Doctor yelled. “I'm not human. But my friends are, so please find them!”

“Okay,” Fin said, “give me a description and I'll put out a BOLO.”

“A what? Never mind. Graham O'Brien, white, middle aged, grey and brown hair, lovely smile, and his eyes crinkle when...” the Doctor stopped and coughed. “British. London accent. He was wearing a big coat over a blue jumper – do you know how cold your winters are? He couldn't get warm. Ryan Sinclair. British Afro Caribbean, young, late teens, short hair, tall, a bit goofy. Yorkshire accent. Red jeans, some kind of trendy trainers – oh yes, goddess of competitions and all that! Nike! I was there, you know, at the first Olympics. Had to go naked! So embarrassing! - never mind! I'm waffling. I can do that. And black leather jacket. Yaz – Yasmin – Khan. Long black hair, she was wearing a brown leather jacket with black jeans and big boots and has a bit of an attitude. Early twenties. British Pakistani. Also from Yorkshire. Oh, and she's one of your own, she's a police officer. Got that?”

SVU Squad Room, 9.43am

Meanwhile, at his desk at the SVU department, Sergeant Munch got a phone call for his other bosses, a secret organisation he had been recruited to after years after searching for a truth that Agent Mulder had inspired him to look for.

Unlike Agent Mulder, John Munch, or Agent J, was a man to be trusted, his love of conspiracy theories a perfect cover for a part time Man in Black, their representative in New York for all the alien migrants settled in the city and state, all of whom could also be victims of sex crimes. He worked in partnership with a doctor and a psychotherapist to support any alien victim, and forensics was always taken to the MiB lab. UNIT America knew and supported financially the MiB, a perfect example of a multi-agency approach that typified his country. For decades, UNIT America, MiB, the FBI and NSA, all tried to shut down the shady and damaging Consortium as a threat to America and all mankind, but sadly, they had the multinational funding and the ear of certain Republican senators and continued their nefarious programs unfettered.

Sometimes though, the good guys could harvest data from the Consortium and they had sightings earlier that week of a battered British police telephone booth and knew that someone called the Doctor had arrived.

“Sure thing. Okay. On my way now,” Munch said, hanging up and grabbing his coat.

Bellevue Hospital ER, 11.02am

The Doctor sat sipping sweet tea which tasted, to her, almost quite unlike any tea she had ever tasted for a long while, if not ever, but it was sweet and warm and soothing, while she waited for that sweet Fin to receive any news on her friends and while the quite intelligent and sensitive Dr. Melinda Warner talked her through the rape kit she had done, reassuring her it wasn't the alien DNA of her own that they were interested in, it was any human male DNA left by her assailants they were looking for. Rollins asked for details, which were sketchy due to the realisation she had been drugged, which panicked her slightly. Both the thought of unknown Terran drugs in her system or the black holes in her recent memory were alarming, perhaps a little frightening, if she was honest with herself. She didn't really like Detective Rollins on first impression, there was something aggressive and damaged about her. Still. She had contact with Manhattan Special Victims Unit, so that would be useful to her investigations. They would be able to access FBI data bases on trafficked and abused children and might even have some of the missing on file with no idea of where they came from. Not at all in the way she would have chosen, but still, always a silver lining somewhere.

She begrudgingly allowed Warner to take her bloods to test, worried about her alien DNA more than the rape kit, as she had once spent decades mopping up, recovering all the Time Lord DNA a shady US group had got hold of. However, it was best to find out what those hoodlums had put in her system, there were plenty of Terran drugs she didn't react well to at all, and some she was even allergic to. Probably Stoian drugs too, but she'd yet to find out much about them. They used a lot of electro-chemical impulses to block stimuli rather than pharmaceuticals. And drugs were so restricted there too. Drugs in, children out, was what the evidence they were chasing had pointed to.

As Dr Warner was taking the Doctor's blood another detective walked in.

“What are you doing here Munch?” the lovely detective with the unpronounceable name asked. Odafin Tutuola. It sounded lovely but the Doctor's tongue tripped on it as much as it tripped on any old word her loom body used to.

“Cragan needs all three of you back at the office. I need to take this person's statement. Orders from on high. What's the blood for?”

“The Doctor's been drugged, or she suspects she has,” Melinda replied.

“Okay. Good. And you've done the rape kit?”

“Yes.”

“I'll need both the blood and the rape kit,” This Munch said as Melinda finished the blood test and sealed the vial in a plastic wallet. He took something out of his pocket and his glasses seemed to automatically darken just before a bright flash.

“Hey, what was that?” the Doctor yelled angrily, as she began to suspect exactly what is was.

Both the Special Victim Unit officers and the ME seemed to look confused and frozen.

“Wha-?”

“Who-?”

“Munch?”

“You all have to go report to Cragan remember? I'm here to take the vic's statement.” He opened the door for them, and all three humans stumbled out, confused.

“What did you do?” the Doctor demanded, curious as to where this Munch had obtained such technology.

“Wiped the front of their memories. I have forensic people that will do your rape kit and tox screen correctly, without freaking out. They already have your clothes. Did I hear right, you're the Doctor? I heard he was a man, all the pictures of him are male.”

“Well, I was, for over 2000 years, but not a man, a Time Lord. I'm still a Time Lord.”

“Okay. Well Doctor, my people are here to look after aliens who live in New York, and visitors too. You've still been attacked, so we still have to treat this like any crime, they will still be apprehended and trialled. So, can I take your statement?”

“I don't really care what they've done to me! I really don't! I've been raped before many, many, times over my lives. They just want to shut me up, and it will only make me louder! No one ever puts me down, not by rape, or torture, or anything, I'll just come back stronger! But I'm here investigating sex crimes of my own, so I do need help.”

The Doctor seemed to think she was shaking with self-righteous anger, but Munch could see it might have been more shock and the need to convince herself. But he was curious. He nodded. “If we can, we will help. So. Tell me Doctor.”


	2. Orbiting and on Sto, four weeks previously

Yaz was holding onto Ryan's back as he peddled furiously on an exercise bike, muttering under his breath. Yaz made encouraging noises. Ryan still wasn't sure if it would work, as an exercise bike stayed still on a chunky stand. He said so, yet again.

“Give it a go,” Graham said encouragingly, also yet again. He was following the Doctor as she meandered around the console, watching her as she was fiddling with bits and bobs. He still was trying and failing to make head nor tail of it. “If you can keep your balance for long enough on that, it might be easier moving to a real bike. Eh Doc, don't you agree?”

“What?” she looked up, appearing very distracted. A realisation of the topic of conversation crossed her face. “Oh. Yes. It's actually much harder keeping balance. The momentum of a regular bicycle, the friction of force against gravity, keeps your balance. It's been in mothballs for centuries. Melanie used to make me go on that horrible thing every day. She said I was fat. Fat! I was a fine figure of a man. Evelyn's chocolate cakes may have given me a little padding, admittedly, but it was splendid manly padding to show of my wonderful coat. It killed me in the end.”

“The chocolate cake?” Graham clarified.

“Or that horrible coat? You're talking of that dreadful coat I found in the wardrobe room, aren't you?” Yaz added.

“No. The bike. I fell off and turned in a manipulative short person, moving in mysterious ways,” the Doctor mimed weaving and dodging and the lifting of an invisible hat while pointing an invisible umbrella. “I sometimes think I spent centuries clearing up the mess he made. But the alternative was far worse, believe me!”

Graham and Yaz were so confused by the Doctor's babbling, they didn't notice Ryan quietly dismount the exercise bike at the Doctor's words of it causing a previous regeneration. The Doctor noticed though.

“Oh, Ryan, I had radiation poisoning, I was dying anyway. I just didn't want to worry Mel so went through her exercise regime anyway.”

“Riding a bike isn't everything,” Ryan muttered.

“No, it isn't,” the Doctor agreed, smiling kindly at him.

Just then, a weird high-pitched bleeping emerged from the TARDIS console, just as the hum of the flight changed and the time rotor wobbled and changed its rhythm.

“What's that then?” Graham asked over the Doctor's shoulder.

“We're being hailed. We've come out of the Vortex to receive the call. We're... oh, we're in orbit around Sto. Not been to Sto for ages. Very Earth like, both its people and its culture.”

The console beeped again. The Doctor hit a button. An audio recording began to play.

_“Um, hello Doctor. It's me. You probably don't remember me. Or you do, but you didn't like me. Probably with good reason. Rickston Slade. From the Titanic disaster...”_

All three humans exchanged a look at the words 'titanic' and 'disaster', so the Doctor waved an irritated hand, “No, not that one.”

_“Anyway, near death does strange things to a person, doesn't it? I'd like to think I've made you proud in my own quiet way. I was right, I made a killing. And with it I set up a charitable foundation working with the Sto street kids across the planet and moons and colonies. The collapse of Max Capricorn Industries and the whole stink of corporate murder caused a massive economic depression, so there is a lot of poverty about. Can't solve it all, as a wise Earthman once said, the poor will always be with you. But I try to do what I can for the children. Food. Baths. Clothes. Shelter. An education._

_“Right, get to the point Rickson. I haven't set this message into space hoping it will find you to brag. I don't know what else to do. The authorities and judiciary aren't concerned. The entire Orion Union isn't bothered, it has enough to do shoring up our economy, so we don't collapse into anarchy. Who cares about a few unwanted poor orphans, right?_

_“So, for several years now, children are going missing. Mostly the street kids, but some poor kids with families in the old factory and farming districts across the planet, moons, and colonies, in fact the entire Union. But only Sto kids, pink and brown humanoid children. No reptiles. No other humanoids, no blue or green kids. Which is odd, that no native Orion children are missing, they are normally the poor ones who end up trafficked. And no cyborgs either. Usually from aged six to twelve, but some younger and older. Over the last few months, the numbers of the disappeared have grown exponentially!_

_“Please. For the children Doctor. Help!_

_“You can contact me either at my business, Slade Investments, or my charity, Kid Futures. I'm based on Angawat in the northern hemisphere of the homeworld.”_

*

“Now, this is an alien planet!” Ryan said, spinning around in a circle, looking upwards at the tall glass towers, the flying cars in several levels, the bridges and walkways connecting the higher parts of the towers, the human looking people and the not so looking human people, short red people with spiky red faces, tall, spiky, green, skinny, people, and green and blue more human looking people, a group of reptilian looking males dressed like someone from a Chinese ‘baddie’ from a mid-twentieth century western cartoon. An air car went past, driven by a human looking brown skinned man but what looked like a giant green willy with one giant eye, wrapped up in what looked like a shower curtain, sitting in the back, waving its tentacles about as if animating its conversation.

“Seems like any big city on Earth. A nightmare to police,” Yaz replied, seeing the homeless in the streets; at least two 'accidental bumping into a person' that looked far more like a pickpocketing incident; people walking through the crowds begging, people sitting in front of blankets with what looked like the rest of their worldly goods, which they were trying to sell; people drunk or stoned on something, staggering and stumbling and mumbling to themselves; what seemed like a domestic between two angry looking women in a doorway of a shop.

“It looks a lot like that film, you know the one, with Harrison Ford. Blade Runner, that's it,” Graham chipped in, seeing, or rather smelling, the pollution, the smog, the peoples of so many cultures and clothes with their sweat and pheromones and perfumes and laundry, the street food, all assaulting his nasal passages; along with the big floating screens full of advertising, the flying cars, the floating food stalls; the feeling the drizzle on his face and clothes, and also feeling an over-all element of despair among most of the people. Yaz and Ryan looked at him. “Alight, before your time then. Maybe a bit like The Fifth Element then. You must know that one? Bruce Willis?” He looked at their blank faces. “Do you have to be so young? I meant, Earthlike but more technology!” Graham expected the Doctor to chip in with a snide comment about there being clean, green, energy, but she was silent. “Where's the Doc gone now?” he asked, spinning around to look.

The three humans scanned their surrounds, until Yaz spotted a blonde head. “There, she's talking to those two boys huddled up in that doorway.”

They walked up to her.

“Thank you,” the Doctor was saying. “I will find your friends, I promise. It's why I'm here.”

Both boys, of about eight and ten, curled up together under a dirty, wet, duvet, stared up at the Doctor with hopeful eyes.

The Doctor turned to leave, seeing her three friends standing behind her.

“Doctor!” Yaz prompted.

“What?”

“Do you have appropriate currency for this planet?” Graham asked pointedly.

“Oh? Oh. Oh! Oh yes!” The Doctor smiled and rifled through her pockets and produced a pile of three cornered yellow and white metal coins and handed them to the boys. She rummaged further and pulled out sandwiches, cake, chocolate, and a Thermos, which she also handed to the boys. “Soup,” she said. “Nice and hot. You can sell the Thermos afterwards.”

*

They had been walking for some while, through the city centre and shopping main area of Angawat, out westward through deserted business and manufacturing districts. Everyone was exhausted, cold, and wet.

“Doctor, I know it might seem a bit obvious, but why didn't we just go straight to this Rickston Slade's office or even his charity? Of give him a bell, or whatever the communications equivalent is?” Graham asked.

“I'm well knackered,” Ryan added.

“And cold. Soaked through. Why is it raining all the time?” Yaz completed.

“Because Graham, I want to find out first-hand. Which is why I've been talking to the street children I've met. And also why I filled my pockets with food. I'm not a complete idiot, like you two seem to imply,” the Doctor glared at Yaz and Graham. Ryan smiled smugly at not being implicated in upsetting the Doctor.

“Yeah, well now we've spoken to some kids and all of them know of missing ones, and from what we've seen around here there is definitely a recession on. Reminds me for the ‘80s,” Graham said. “What are we going to do?”

“I'm thinking. I think best when I walk.”

“Well, we are only human, Doc, we can't walk indefinitely like you,” Graham prompted gently.

“Yeah. I'm half starved. Any chance of some of that food for those kids coming our way?” Ryan said.

The Doctor stared at them all in confusion. “Gangs? Slaves? Food even? Seen that enough? My place? Or fixed point? Can't fix economies and solve homelessness and poverty throughout all time and space, can I?” The Doctor pulled a silent whistle out her pocket and blew, of course no one heard anything, but a pink taxi lowered itself from the sky.

“You got the fare?” A green skinned humanoid demanded.

The Doctor pulled out some more of the triangular coins and showed them on a spread palm.

“Where to then Frau?”

“The best hotel in the city,” the Doctor said. “I need to think some more,” she added to her friends. She then grinned. “I'm a Frau now. That's a new one!”

*

It was late. They had checked into a suite, the Doctor not really paying attention to the assumption that they were two couples and the suite only had two double bedrooms and a large sitting room. One wall was the entertainment console, and the Doctor had instantly switched on the news while Graham made them all a hot drink.

Slade had been right about one thing. Sto's economy was tanking, unemployment running at 80%, and recent cutbacks in health and education services were leaving many dying on the streets. Strangely, rather than blame the financial services backing up Max Capricorn Industries, or the man himself, the needs of the unemployed, the sick, and cyborgs, were being blamed for the planetary debt. She – he then – had gathered from Astrid that the cyborg prejudice was lessening, and inclusive legislation had been introduced. The depression seemed to be creating a few steps backwards. Like any level 6 or 7 society, most actual work had been done by robots, and with the factories and service sector call centres idle, the robots and AIs were too. Many politicians were calling for their destruction, as the old robophobia, and the always under the surface paranoia of the robots and computers gaining sentience and killing everyone, was raising its ugly head with the politicians too. Of course, it did happen. Look at the Movellans! But then, look at how the poor Movellans were treated. Why make a sex toy fully self-aware then be shocked if it attacks you suffering from post-rape trauma? She was going off on a tangent, although rape might play a part in the abductions. She hoped not. Orions were big into trafficked prostitutes. Not children though? Far too young? Take them young and groom them for an adulthood of sex services? Could that even be a thing? Surely too long a term investment when plenty of hungry and desperate adults were out there, readymade?

However, as she was thinking about cyborg rights and robophobia, and more often, blame and demonisation always seemed to be the way to go when an economy hit a recession or depression, rather than sensible approaches of working together and rebuilding the economy for all. Profit over welfare, again and again. There was not one item on missing children. After the local planetary news, the news moved to the Orion Union, an economic trading partnership and peace treaty of many planets in the Orion belt and beyond. The Doctor was a bit hazy on local politics, but believed it had been started by Alpha Centauri, Orion itself, Draconia, and Andor, after the violent trade wars of the last century following the expulsion of the Tzun from the region. Going by the species of the finance minister of the Union, Nova Martia had also joined.

The Doctor bit back a tiny piece of shameful, atavistic, prejudice and told herself they weren't all warriors, before she could listen to the minister's statement.

Apparently, the other planets in the Union could not afford to prop up the failing Sto state any longer without more hardship and austerity measures by the government.

The Doctor changed over in disgust.

“I was watching that!” Graham complained.

“Why?” Ryan asked. “It was just like back home, same old, same old, except with reptile people and red, green, and blue people people as well some with spiky faces...”

“They said nothing about the missing children, did they?” Yaz pointed out.

“Also like back home, right?” Graham said sadly. “Kids go missing from all over the world, trafficked and that, it's only when a paedophile ring is closed down we hear anything. No one tells us what happens to the kids. Back last year, our government left all those refugees they promised a home to in Calais? Where are they now, with the same evil men, I'll bet!”

“What are you talking about?” the Doctor asked, sounding horrified.

“Don't tell me, for all your fighting monsters and evil computers and the like, you don't know what Graham is talking about?” Yaz asked, genuinely curious at the Doctor's naivete, but prepared to accept for all her thousands of years and until recently being male, could be entirely innocent of any knowledge of sex-based crimes.

“Not really...” the Doctor pulled a face. She hated admitting she didn't know something. The English word had Greco-Roman roots. Child lover. Surely not?

“Well, where did you think the street children are going to, Doctor?” Yaz asked gently.

“I'm not sure, several possibilities have crossed my mind. I've come across cyber technology that requires an unwilling human component, as well as abducted people turned into food in economically damaged situations, especially where there is famine. Nothing good. At the end of the day, disposable child labour is cheaper than both paying adults or maintaining robots to harvest crops or assemble stem bolts or talking dolls or whatever. Also nothing good. But Graham... Yaz... are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting? Children?!” the Doctor paced about the room as she spoke, pulling at her hair and rubbing at the back of her neck and her forehead. Graham dimmed the volume of the screen console.

“Well, duh, children are what paedos want!” Ryan said. Yaz and Graham gave him a look that suggesting he was being too blunt with the Doctor. He rolled his eyes at them and went on, “I thought that was why this was urgent. I hadn't thought about the other things. Do you mean, like cutting their brain out and putting it in a robot?”

“Sometimes,” the Doctor replied flatly, coming to a full stop on the floor in front of the wall screen,

“Gross!”

“Abducting children to work happens on Earth too. Who do you think picks your cocoa beans for chocolate?” Yaz asked Ryan.

Ryan shrugged, “Fair trade is too expensive, Yaz. I know that, but I assumed, here, people had robots or they, I dunno, had big automated machines to harvest.”

“It doesn't matter where the children are going, it can't be for any good reasons,” the Doctor said, spinning around to look at them sitting on the sofas, grabbing hold of her braces as if to centre herself. “And I don't want to sound racist, but paedophilia is a human sickness. At least, I don't think I've ever come across even a sniff of adults wanting that with children outside human space and time, although that is a vast amount of both! But you are not out here yet, are you?”

“We don't know, do we Doc? What is the date on Earth?” Graham got up and went to the comfort station and put on the kettle for more tea. It was an interesting blend, but he was getting used to it, they had already had two cups each after they checked in half an hour ago. They were so chilly and damp. It had been a long, cold, night so far. He added six sachets of sugar for the Doc, who obviously needed topping up. He also had to busy himself and not look at her, he couldn't bear that blank look of disgust as the Doctor announced in all of time and space, only human beings were so evil they could sexually abuse children.

“Around about September 2012 I think.”

“Then no. What about humans from the future, with time travel?” Yaz asked.

“That's it!” the Doctor yelled, jumping up in the air. “I am so out of my depth, this is so big, and not so obvious. But here you are, a police officer, Yaz, with all your training!”

“I'm a probationer, 18 months in. But I do want to be in CID, so yeah, what do you need Doctor?”

“What would you do? What is the procedure?”

“Well, first off, I would have gone to see this Rickston Slade person and asked him why he called you, then interview the people who work for his charity who work directly with kids. Then find children who have known some who have gone missing. Then see what we have, see if a pattern emerges.”

“Do we need incident boards and diagrams and everything?” the Doctor started to sound excited again, rather than repressed or angry. “Patterns. I used to work like this. A long time ago. Now I just rush in. This is going to take a long while, isn't it?”

“Sit down and drink your tea Doc,” Graham said, putting his arm around her shoulder and guiding her to the sofa. “We can't do nothing now until morning, when we'll go to this Slade bloke's office. Ryan, turn the volume up, let’s find out why she is snogging that robot...”

“She's a cyborg, not a robot, it's 'Forbidden Love', a soap opera,” the Doctor explained, taking a sip of her tea.

“Okay then,” Graham said decisively, “soap operas, tea, order take away, and an early night, then Slade Enterprises in the morning.”

“And where we will all sleep?” demanded Yaz.

“Easy, Ryan and me'll bunk up, you can have the other bedroom, and the Doc will doze on the sofa. We know she won't sleep as much as us.”

*

As it turned out, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz crept around the Doctor that morning, having hot showers, figuring out the washer-dryer unit to clean their clothes – sleepwear had been provided – and ordering a Sto full breakfast with room service, which was teleported to their dining table, as had their evening meal. Piles of fluffy white rolls, and those of spiced ones filled with dried fruit, along with bowls of different fruits and plates of hot and cold sliced meats and another plate of various cheeses.

All the while, the Doctor slept on, curled up on her side on the sofa, her coat wrapped around her, hugging a cushion and sucking a thumb.

As always, Yaz ate only the vegetarian options, despite Graham telling her the meats tasted more like beef and game, not pork.

“Doesn't matter, the cheese is excellent, this one is like Brie. And this one is like a good, crumbly, Cheshire. Try them. And this – looks a bit like an apple, tastes like a cross between strawberry and peach.”

“I like the bread,” Ryan said, pulling another roll apart and filling it with some of the sliced meat and cheese.

“Should we wake her?” Graham asked.

“Nah. She hardly ever sleeps. Probably be cross and claim she was just thinking things through,” Ryan replied

“She might be, in her sleep,” Yaz added thoughtfully.

“Well, I'm going to put the TV on, anyway,” Graham decided.

It was early in the morning, and there seemed to be a mix of cosy magazine programmes and news programmes both giving commuter information on streets and air-lanes and space-lanes, public transit, and space flights, along with a lot of brightly coloured cartoons for small children.

“We should watch some of these, figure out what children are into,” Yaz said.

“Why not? Best way to learn a new culture is from a kiddie's point of view,” Graham agreed. “Besides, we already figured out that the news isn't reporting the abductions.”

They ended up watching a drama aimed at 10 year olds, about a group of Sto and Orion children struggling to survive after their school trip crashed on Earth. The errors about their own planet from an outside alien perspective was hilarious.

“What are you all laughing at?” the Doctor asked, sitting up and stretching her arms and yawning. “Must have nodded off.”

The three humans looked at each other and grinned. “Of course you did. Come and have breakfast,” Yaz said.

“Come up with any ideas yet Doc?” Graham asked.

“Other than following Yaz's plan, no, not yet. We need to work out where they are going and what is happening to them, then think how we can stop it and get them back. If we can.”

“I hope we can,” Yaz said. “Do they really think we are so stupid and violent?” she added, nodding to the screen.

“Their information is a bit patchy and skewed. But you must remember, they get most from degraded radio waves from your TV along with the odd story of someone who crash landed – traders’ tales mostly. We're light years away and the radio waves intercepted by anthropologists and Earth fans alike are decades old. So mostly US TV, as they had it first, or for a mass market anyway.”

“So they are basing their ideas of us on I Love Lucy and Star Trek?” Graham asked.

The Doctor grinned. “More older westerns and cop shows. A lot of guns and fisticuffs for certain. Ooh, look at the breakfast platter. Can I have a fruit bun and cheese?”

Graham plated her up some of every cheese and a couple of buns, and switching on the kettle as he passed, handed her the plate as she sat on the back of the sofa.

“Thanks. So, when I've eaten, we'll get a taxi to Slade's office and take it from there.”

“Shouldn't we call ahead and make an appointment?” Yaz asked.

The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. “Oh no, he sent the message and invited us. We'll just go!”

“But when did he sent the message?” Ryan asked. “It might have been weeks or months.”

“Or even years,” Yaz added.

“Oh no, he sent it yesterday. It might be centuries for me since I saw him, but the TARDIS homed into it as soon as it was sent, as soon as she was in the right time and space that is. We just bumped into it as it was transmitted. Time travel. It gets confusing. And from what I gathered; most the children have been going missing for six months at the most. The few going missing over the years before that could even have another cause! We might even be investigating two separate crimes!”

*

Slade Enterprises was in a tall, red, glass, tower, the shape of a crescent, reaching impossibly to the sky and beyond the atmosphere with its top point, the lower end sinking into the ground. It was a mixed building, many businesses, clinics, schools, and some homes. It was intersected at three levels by glass bridges connecting it to other towers of different colours and shapes. Two flitterpads stuck out at angles nearly the top, and the middle had a large gap to allow air cars to fly through. Parking spaces were stacked either side of the gap. The Doctor and her friends took a taxi and it flew around the building, stuck in air traffic, before they entered the car park. They took an outside glass elevator up the side and then through as the crescent fattened on their way up. The three humans grinned at each other. It was beautiful, and hard to reconcile to the crumbling factories and children sleeping on the streets they had seen the day before.

The lift spat them out in a red carpeted corridor with gold walls with swirling black patterns. At the end of the corridor was the office they wanted. Its door was arched, with ‘Rickston Slade Enterprises: Investments, Stocks and Bonds’, written in curly writing at the top. The arch split in two and opened with a soft swish.

Inside was a circular high white desk, with a young blond man sat behind it, an earpiece sticking out of his left ear. Screens showed stock markets or advertising Slade's services. A poster about the charity was opposite the desk, and to the left one wall was entirely glass and over-looked the city beneath the clouds. The air was thin outside, the window pressure sealed, they were near the edge of the atmosphere.

“Can I help you?” the young man asked. He would be attractive if his ears didn't stick out, Ryan decided.

“Surely it's Midshipman Alonso Frame?” the Doctor said, striding forward and holding out her hand. “And it's more what we can do for you? Slade asked for my help. It's the Doctor. Oh, I've regenerated, the difference is entirely perceptual! What are you doing here?”

Alonso Frame sat with his mouth gaping like a goldfish, the only movement was to take out his earpiece.

“Hi,” Graham said, stepping forward. “I'm Graham O'Brien, this is Yasmin Khan -”

“Yaz,” Yaz interrupted.

“And this is my grandson, Ryan Sinclair.”

“Hi,” Ryan said, grinning friendlily.

“Hi,” Alonso mouthed, lifting a hand.

“And this is the Doctor, and she was probably a man when you met her. Him. We got a message from your boss Trau Slade telling us about missing children and asking for help.” Graham smiled. “So, do you want to let your boss know we're here?”

“Okay,” Alonso said numbly, shaking his head slowly. “Jack said about regeneration. He had pictures. But none of them like you.” He looked at the Doctor a moment, struggling with acceptance, but the Doctor soon proved it was him. Her! Whatever! She grinned and exclaimed,

“Captain Jack Harkness? Aha! I thought you would be perfect for each other.”

Alonso thought back to his night at that club, just having lost his job and not knowing what to do or where to go. “You were wrong Doctor, he was obsessed with you, didn't understand the concept of word faithful, and he broke my heart and left me still jobless and penniless. If Rickson hadn't found me...”

“I'm sorry. So, are you and he...?”

“He's my boss! He likes women, mostly. Money more, I think. Anyway, I sent that message, he recorded it yesterday morning. I only just sent it.”

The Doctor looked at Graham and shrugged, “Whoops,” she said, “timey whimy.” She turned back to Alonso and grinned like a crazy person. “And here we are. Surprise!”

“Rickson is in a video conference with the Orions. Can I get you anything?”

“Tea. Oh, and biscuits. Anything with two biscuits sandwiched with cream and/or jam. A custard cream is best.” She began to prowl around the office, looking at the screens and posters and then out of the window. “Ooh, we're right at the edge of the stratosphere, here, aren't we? That's high. So very high!” She looked up and watched a spaceship from behind more towers rise and start its escape burn almost while still touching the tops of the towers. “Big dangerous, isn't it?” she asked.

“I didn't build it,” Alonso replied drily. “I'll just...” he indicated a side door which presumably led to the kitchen.

Ryan, who had sat down on one of the plush cream sofas, leapt up. “I'll help!” he said.

“No need,” Alonso said.

“No, it's alright.”

“Ryan, don't you think...?” Graham began, as the two young men disappeared into the kitchenette.

“He'll be fine,” Yaz said, and then winced at the sound of dropped and broken crockery.

“Sure about that?” Graham asked drily.

“Your grandson likes Alonso.”

“I'm old, not stupid,” Graham replied, “but that's only going to make his dyspraxia worse.”

“What did I miss?” the Doctor asked, turning from the window and her ship and car watching.

Yaz and Graham laughed awkwardly. They looked at each other. Did Time Lords even date? Obviously her (his?) match-making skills left a lot to be desired, from what Alonso said.

*

Half an hour later they were sat around a large pink oval table in the larger office space, one wall a screen for information and communications, one side another glass wall, the wall with the door to the outer office full of pictures of children and appeals for donations to the charity, and the last wall a huge picture of Rickson Slade and a biog of him and his company achievements. Alonso stayed in the room with a tablet to take notes, and a large tray with more tea and as many Sto type sweet biscuit-like delicacies Alonso had been able to buy and have teleported sat on a large plate. Only the Doctor was eating. Rickston Slade was as big a self-satisfied, smug, spoilt, child as the Doctor remembered from centuries ago. He also took so much longer to convince that she was the Doctor, and she was so bored was it. Somehow, 'but you're a woman' was becoming more boring faster than 'but you're older/younger/blonder/taller/shorter' and she was so fed up and, well, a bit homesick for her own people, to whom it wouldn't be such a big deal, even if gender swapping wasn't all that common. Besides, one did not comment on a regeneration, it was rude.

As requested, Yaz took notes. She even had one of those nice, black, moleskin, police notebooks, so reassuring.

Rickston had coloured coded diagrams and maps.

She loved a good colour code.

“These are the areas most go missing from. They are all pinkish fair or dark brown humanoid – or mostly, two green Orion girls of about eleven disappeared a month ago and a young blue-skinned Bolian boy of about seven went six months ago,” Rickston was saying. “My staff were wondering if that was important – if it meant Earth was involved?”

“That isn't really likely, mate,” Graham said. “Earth can't even get to their moon, let alone all the way out here.”

“Really? I thought they had moon bases and space shuttles?”

“Nah, not us...” Ryan began.

The Doctor coughed.

“We have a moon base?”

“Well, it was appropriated... but as far as I know, it's been empty for a while. And the space shuttles only go into orbit, they only go into orbit to launch more com sats – they haven't even been to the moon for decades, and all they did then was play low-G golf. So, it's not likely. But you are right, it is interesting only the children that could pass for human are missing. But could that also be just because it's mostly Sto children who are street children, that it is Sto who has a problem with it? Draconia and Nova Martia would never leave a hatchling unsupported, even if the family were poor or there was no family? As for Orion – I'm sure any child could find work that provided accommodation if they had no family support? I'm afraid I don't know much about the other Union planets, but... what am I saying?

“I'm saying your planet's naked capitalism and anti-tax culture puts more children at risk. There, that is what I am saying. Am I being rude? Probably, but I don't care.” The Doctor grinned and popped another biscuit in her mouth. “Can we have the maps and diagrams? Lovely colour coding by the way,” she added, grinning at Alonso, and she then asked, as Rickson looked like he was about to protest or defend his culture and economy. “Plus, I need access to all your centres and homes. We'll start here, the capital, as most children seem to have gone from here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between seasons 11 and 12, with a little small ignore of canon in that the Doctor's fam took her seriously and believed she had been male before :)


	3. The TARDIS  interior, no time, no space (but outside is NY, NY, 2012)

“Thank you for this,” the Doctor said as she got out of Munch's car, still in the hospital gown and wrapped up in a hospital blanket, a plastic bag full of her belongings, which seemed an awful lot for a few pockets and a small fanny pack. She pulled out a key on a long chain and walked up to the blue phone booth. Munch followed, burning with curiosity.

“Wow! It is bigger on the inside, just like your X file says,” he said after following her through the apparent wooden doors and through to a large area, a huge console in the middle of the vast room.

“Will you be okay here a moment!” the Doctor called from the other side, where there was a door to presumably the interior and the rest of the TARDIS. She beetled off through, and then popped her head back around the door. “Don't touch anything!”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Munch replied, deadpan. Once she was gone, he wandered around the console, looking but not touching, wondering if anything made any sense in relation to human controls of anything, vehicle or otherwise, and decided they might as well have been there for show.

“Da da!” called the Doctor from the doorway, spreading her arms. She was dressed in a pale coat, a dark tee shirt with stripes across her chest – she was so flat chested, Munch would have decided that Time Lords weren't mammals if it wasn't for the forensic reports and the X-files on the Master/Missy and Romana. He decided she probably bound, better for all the running about the Doctor seemed to do from his/her rather large X-file.

“Isn't that exactly the same as your clothes taken to forensics?”

“Well yeah. Of course. Duh! Ooh, do I say duh now? Do you say duh in the United States?”

“I think we can shamefully claim the right to inventing it,” Munch replied. “Shall we go? Remember, you are from Scotland Yard and the children from Europe and Africa?”

The Doctor laughed. “As if! The truth please, Sergeant Munch, or I won't help you! You might be damaging your colleagues’ brains, have you considered that, the amount you have to wipe them?”

Did his colleagues have so many issues between them just because they were cops, or because they dealt with such heinous crimes, or because he played merry hell with their short term memories, especially in recent months with a spate of all these dead children with alien organs and DNA showing up in dumpsters and beaches and rivers?

Chicken and egg, decided Munch.

“It's my job,” he explained, “I have to keep the existence of aliens of New York secret, it's for their own protection,” he said as they headed for the door.

As she locked the TARDIS door, she replied, “I'm not asking you to reveal all the people your agency have on your immigration lists, just these trafficked children from Sto. If they really, really can't handle it, then we'll see...”

Cragan's office, Special Victims Unit, 12.47pm

“What are you all doing here?” Cragan looked up from his desk, startled. Detectives Rollins and Tutuola, and more mysteriously, Dr Warner, stood in his doorway. “Aren't you following up the report of the rape and murder of a white woman down Chelsea piers?”

“Um... Munch said you wanted us,” Tutuola explained, confused

“I promised her I wouldn't leave. I'm not sure what I'm doing here Captain. She's not dead, and not... not...” Warner frowned, as if something was missing, something important.

“Oh. Munch. Right.” Cragan turned to his monitor and punched a few keys, and then read an email. “I remember. It seems our vic was an investigator herself. We're to give her all assistance. Munch is on his way here with her to take her statement and then for her to brief us.”

“What investigations? Who does she work for?”

“Munch is a little vague. Scotland Yard maybe? We'll find out in a bit. I suggest you all get yourselves a coffee, and then chase up those BOLOs you put out on the vic's associates.”

“Right,” Rollins said, sarcastically, angry at the strange blank bits in her head. She wanted to shake it to clear it. She looked at her partner who shrugged and said, diplomatically,

“Thanks Captain.”

“What about me?” Warner asked.

“Shut the door behind them, I have something to brief you on.”

Rollins and Tutuola headed to their desks, to the curious stares of Amaro and Benson. “Don't even ask,” Fin said, slumping down at his desk.

Meanwhile, as Warner shut the door, Cragan said apologetically, “I think you got some collateral damage with a mind-wipe.”

“No wonder I feel hazy, that son of a b-”

“That wasn't bullshit, she is investigating abducted children. Munch doesn't have any more details.”

“So, she is an alien. I was sure she was. But that's no holoemiter or suit, is it? She looks completely human on the outside. Screwy, scary on the inside, and freaky fast healing abilities.”

“But, looking at the initial report, there's gonna be mental scars that will need some support, whatever she says. Time for a call back, wouldn't you say? Maybe call in our specialist xeno- psychiatrist too.”

Mercy Hospital, 3.53pm, November 30th

“Hi, is he in there?” Fin asked the young woman uni as he walked up the hospital corridor.

“Yeah. A Brit. He's a bit dazed. Head injury. What do you want him for?”

“He's an important witness. You didn't arrest him, did you? We just need to keep him safe.”

“No!”

“Good.” Fin pulled the door and walked in to see a middle-aged white man lying on the bed, looked more than a little confused. A nurse was doing some obs.

Fin showed his badge. “Can you give us a moment?”

She smiled and nodded. “Sure.”

“You Graham O'Brien?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Detective Odafin Tutuola, Special Victims Unit. The Doctor listed you as missing and at risk. Looks like she was right.”

Graham struggled to sit up, wincing and touching the back of his head gingerly. It had a dressing on it, blood already seeping through.

“The Doc? Is she okay? Wait, Special Victims Unit, isn't that like for children, sex abuse and abductions and so on? How did she get you to help so fast?” Graham paused, looking at the detective's face, thinking he was wrong, and Special Victims meant something else. “Is she okay?” he demanded again, panicked. He felt like he had completely failed her. He had supposed to be keeping a look out and protecting her back. If anything had happened to her, it was his fault.

Fin looked at the man, the Doctor's friend. His memory of events in the hospital was a bit hazy, as was when they found her. Didn't they think she was dead? Wasn't there something screwy with her body readings? He remembered a flash. 

Then he remembered hearing the Doctor's insisting she was fine through the door, before Rollins called him in, that being gang raped was nothing, that she was more concerned for her friends.

“She says she's fine.”

“She would,” Graham said with a sigh, nodding his head and instantly regretting it as the world span again and bile rose up in his throat. “Now tell me really,” he insisted.

“She was brutally raped and beaten,” Fin said as gently as he could, with such awful news to give a vic's loved one. But he had to go on, as he was still feeling a bit out of his depth. “Now, tell me who she is, as I'm a little hazy on that.”

“It's not my place to tell,” Graham replied, deciding the Doctor was keeping it quiet, who she was and what they were doing there, feeling sick and cold at the thought of what she'd been through, typically saying she was fine when she obviously wouldn't be. Maybe she'd even tried to hypnotise any alienness out of the detective's memory, it might explain why he seemed a bit drugged and confused for a detective.

“I can respect that,” Fin replied, shrugging, not wanting to push it, desperate all the while to know. But there was no point pushing right now. Cragan wanted all of the Doctor's missing friends found and brought in, and Munch was escorting the Doctor. She was to be assisted or something. It was screwy the way no agency had yet been named and nothing properly explained. He hoped this Doctor or Munch or Cragan gave one soon!

“So, is she injured? In hospital too? Where is she?” Graham asked, looking up at the stern looking detective.

“Er...” Fin felt a little hazy on that too. “She was with my colleague, giving a statement when I last saw her. Bellevue Hospital. Let me see if they've discharged her,” he said, pulling out his phone. “What about you?” he asked.

“Heck of a bruise and broken skin. Concussion. Ye olde blunt instrument from behind. What has the Doc told you about what we were doing?”

“Nothing. As yet. But I got an email on the way over telling me we were assisting her investigation as well as investigating her rape. Don't know anything else though, my boss seems to be keeping schtum on that!”

“Kids are being abducted and we followed their trail to New York. The Doc and I were investigating a possible holding area for them when they arrived. I guess you better add my assault to your list, eh?”

“Yeah,” Fin agreed. “Let me find out where she is, then we'll see if you're fit to leave.”

Chelsea Park 4.03pm

Detectives Benson and Amaro got out of the car and walking up to the patrol man and his partner. The woman officer spoke as soon as they showed their badges.

“They're in the car. What have they done?”

“Did you arrest them?” Amaro asked.

“Sure!” the male officer snapped. “Some raghead and her black accomplice. They have weird accents, can barely understand them. You put out the BOLO, didn't you?”

“They are witnesses, and also, foreign police investigators. And they're British, that's not that weird,” Benson snapped, angrily. “And if I hear of you using a racist term again, I'm filing a report on you, do I make myself clear!”

“Yes sergeant.”

With a look of disgust, Benson opened the door of the squad car. “I'm Sergeant Benson from Manhattan Special Victims Unit. I can only apologise for your treatment. You are not under arrest. Oh for..! There was no need for cuffs!”

A few moments later, Yaz, Ryan, Amaro and Benson were walking in the park. Benson had just broken the news of the Doctor's attack, minimising it for the time being, talking only of a physical assault for both her and Graham, relaying the news that Graham was in hospital with a head injury, how bad they didn't yet know.

Ryan had run off, overcome with feelings, while Yaz tried to swallow hers for the moment. No point reacting until she knew how bad, for either of them. The two officers seemed to think that they were now ordered to assist with investigation the child abductions and confirmed their suspicions over the last four weeks.

Meanwhile, Benson and Amaro had to concede that the prejudiced officer had a point, they had neither heard of a British accent so pronounced before. Yorkshire, apparently. Benson remembered reading Wuthering Heights at school for a book report and not having a clue to what the character Joseph said. She was now understanding what Emily Bronte had been trying to capture. It was still indescribable. She hoped it was in part due to strong emotion due to the news of their friends’ assaults and they would be less pronounced as soon as they recovered themselves a bit. Either that or she would have to get used to it. Her partner hadn't shone in the open minded, not prejudiced, stakes, either, looking at Yaz and speaking to her in Spanish. Yaz had rolled her eyes at him and snapped,

“For the 9000th time, I'm British Pakistani, okay, not bloody Mexican or something!”

SVU interview room, 5.09pm

“Can I get you a coffee or anything Doctor?” Munch asked, as he showed her into a room and asked her to sit down.

“I need to see your Captain; we need to get on with the investigations. Also, any news of my friends?”

“From what I understand all have been found safe and are on the way here. Just indulge us, please. To help in your investigation we have to have one that originates in Manhattan, else we have to hand your case onto the Feds, who will kick it down to their X-Files, and nothing will get done apart from...”

The Doctor laughed. “Don't tell me Mulder and Scully are still at it? I met them back in the 1990s!”

“I know, I read the report. Ideally it would land on the desk of someone with enough brains and clearance to hand it on to UNIT, who would of course let you lead, but that is a big maybe and would take weeks of paperwork.”

“Your country is crazy Sergeant Munch. So many checks and balances it’s a wonder you can function as a nation state at all! So, what do you need me to do?”

“I still need to take your statement and get you in the system here with SVU and copy to MiB and UNIT, then, as you were targeted due to your investigating the abduction of alien children somehow finding their way here, we can then give you the assistance unofficially.”

“Unofficially?”

“Officially, you're to be the victim only. We will be chasing everything else as a motive to your attack.”

“What?”

“Don't worry,” Cragan called from the door, “we will need all you've got, and your expertise. We have the expertise too. But we do have to keep where the children come from a secret for now.”

“Doctor, this is Captain Cragan, our Chief.”

The Doctor nodded, “Hello Captain. I do get it, but I don't have to like it. So, what do we do now?”

“You give a statement. Sorry, but there it is. Can I get you a coffee?” Cragan said.

“Hot chocolate? Can I have a hot chocolate. And a biscuit. Or three. Sorry – cookie. Can I have some cookies please?”

Mercy Hospital, 5.46pm

Fin sat with Graham, and to pass the time, took his statement, such as it was.

“The Doc had detected some kind of alien stuff. She had kept smelling stuff before, and we followed the trail of some men who also 'smelt weird' all the way from Queens to Chelsea. She waved her sonic about and decided she detected matter transport technology in this massive warehouse on the Piers. You know, kind of... never mind. She left me outside and climbed in a window to investigate. Last I knew was watching her go through the second story – no, wait, for you that would be third story – window, her legs waggling in the air, when – wallop, lights out. It was dark when I woke up, I staggered up, realised the back of my head was bleeding, and sort of – fainted, I guess. I woke up again and tried to look for the Doctor. There were no lights on in the building, and it looked cleared out from when we looked in before she broke in. I staggered off and was found by a couple of lads who had just finished some kind of shift work, and they called the cops, who called ‘a bus’. I remember getting confused for a moment, as I was a bus driver. Must have been my head. He meant an ambulance. I blacked out again in the ambulance and woke up here. They tell me I was out most of the day. Got one hell of a headache. In short, got coshed, didn't I? Let the Doc down good and proper.”

“You did what you could,” Fin felt compelled to reassure, even if he was lost. Being hit in the same place they found the Doctor was all that made sense really. He focused on practicalities, and asked, “So, apart from the bang on the head, and the cut also on the back of your head. No other injury, you've not been beaten, or marked, or... interfered with in anyway?”

“No! Thank God!”

Benson's car, downtown traffic, 5.51pm

“So where are you taking us again?” Ryan asked.

“And why?” Yaz added.

“And who are you? Exactly?”

“And how did you know who we are?”

Benson breathed out and glanced at Amaro, before returning her gaze to the heavy traffic in front of her.

“As we said, I'm Detective Amaro and this is Sergeant Olivia Benson. We're NYPD, with Manhattan Special Victims Unit -”

“Kind of like Sapphire?” Yaz asked Amaro.

“What?” asked Ryan of Yaz.

“Seconded,” Amaro.

“Not quite,” Benson answered. “Sapphire is a rape unit only, isn't it? I thought it was just with the Met, but you're not a Londoner are you, Constable Khan?”

“Nah, I'm a Sheffield lass, me. But although the Met invented Sapphire, we in Yorkshire have units very like it. I was due to do a training stint in a specialised Asian unit soon, but when they found out how bad my Punjabi was, they kept me on the streets! But how come you're involved? Did the Doctor tell you about our investigations?”

“Not yet, we have a brief email to tell us to assist you, but I'm afraid your friend is our victim.”

“No!” Yaz screamed. Ryan pulled her into a hug and stared, blank-eyed, at Amaro, who was twisted around so he could look at them.

“Is she okay?” Ryan asked numbly, pausing before asking, “It is the Doctor, right?” he needed to check, suddenly panicked.

“Yes. Doing better than any vic ever, according to our colleague, Detective Rollins, who took her to hospital,” Amaro said. “We have to investigative her so we can investigate what she was looking in to. That's how it works.”

“I get it,” Yaz said, pulling away from Ryan and wiping her eyes with the heel of her hands. “Sort of we'd need a crime to happen in Yorkshire first to take part in a National Crime investigation.”

“Exactly that,” Benson said, nodding. “Now, how we found you was the fact your friend was more concerned with your safety that her own, and we put out a BOLO – be on the look-out – for you on her description.”

“So typical, to be more concerned about us,” Yaz said, nodding sadly.

“Are you both okay? Anything happen?”

“No. We were following a suspect, a gang member – Shoreline 99, have you heard of them? - with a child, but he just took the child to the play park over by the river, and we lost him in the crowds after the child went on the merry-go-round,” Yaz said.

“We were working out how to get back to the Doctor and Graham, when we were arrested and treated like bloody terrorists!” Ryan added.

“I can only apologise again,” Benson said. “You were listed as missing, not as perps. I will be filing a report on your behalf against those officers.”

SVU Interview Room, 6.03pm

The Doctor sat one side of the table, with her hot chocolate and Oreos, dunking them in, to Munch’s disgust, catching them in her mouth just as the cookies were dissolving and the filling almost a creamy liquid. She didn’t look at either of the men as they took her statement. She couldn’t seem to stay focused and went all over the place in sequencing.

“Ace. That’s my friend, one of my very best friends ever, almost a daughter even, but don’t tell Yaz, managed to get info on where they were sending the children. We’d already worked out it must be Earth with Turlough. Ace gave us New York and so we came here two days ago. Turlough – he’s another dear friend. He used to be something more, but not now I’ve regenerated into a woman. I didn’t expect that. Trions are so fixed. More even than humans. Are there any more biscuits – I mean cookies?”

“What children?” Cragan asked, trying to focus on what was important, even as the Doctor rambled, while Munch added, bringing the statement, such as it was, into even sharper focus,

“Alien children? Do they look human?” Munch added.

“Completely. Well for the most part, there might be a few green and blue skinned ones for more exotic customers who know what they are getting.” Her face grew dark and angry. “The most part they are disposable merchandise for human paedophiles. It’s evil.”

“Yes, it is,” Cragan agreed. “We do what we can. We spend years shutting down a child trafficking ring, shutting off foreign sources. Looks like someone got very creative, but how the hell did they manage that?” He turned to look at his colleague, “Will we have to hand this on Munch?”

“Since the Doctor will only work with us under terms that we know all, and won’t work with Mib, UNIT have given us authority. Only for a few of your team, though. You’ll have to pick four, including you and me.”

“That’s easy,” the Doctor grinned, “Liv and the lovely Detective Mr. Tuta… tuta…”

“Tutalola,” Cragan finished for her. “That would have been my choice too, they’re my most experienced officers.”

“Exactly!” the Doctor beamed at Cragan.

“Now, Doctor,” Cragan said, smiling back, “If we could focus please, this is supposed to be your statement. Until your crime is logged as what we are investigating, we can’t help you in your investigating.”

The Doctor put her cookie down on the table and shuddered. “Very well. Ace had got a location of a Trion agent’s meeting place with the Orion Synicate Operative here on Earth. Or New York. I’m sure there are more. Maybe? I know there are more Trion agents, one used to deal with Turlough. I’m waffling again?” She sighed heavily. “We followed an Orion gang member, he hadn’t used a holo-emitter or surgery, just dark brown human toned skin make-up over his green skin, I suppose the dark skin colour covered the green better, and I don’t want to jump to assumptions, but lots of New York gangsters are that colour, aren’t they? Dark brown, or black as you say, not green, I mean. Or they are in your TV programmes? We were in the Crescent Moon Café in Queens, on Brinkerhoff. You might want to write that down. Oh, I see you are writing it all down? Good!”

The Doctor paused and sipped her hot chocolate. “He met some more young men, baggy jeans, tattoos, all the gang-banger accruements as it were. They did complex fist bumps, talked, and then separated, so we did too. I was scanning them with my sonic and at least half were off-worlders, painted Orions and naturally dark and pale Stoians, but the rest human. Graham and I followed three of them to the Chelsea Piers in our hire care, and stood outside until three trucks arrived, and they unloaded some barrels. I scanned them and strangely they contained maple syrup. I like maple syrup, don’t you? But an odd thing for gangs, I thought, so did Graham, but then I could smell a tang on my tongue, just there…” the Doctor stuck her tongue out and pointed to the end.

“A tang?” Munch asked, confused.

“Yes, the acrid taste and smell of matter transportation. We decided the warehouse had taken a delivery of stolen children, so as soon as the truck, and the other men, who went again, locking up, I climbed up. Graham was on guard.”

The Doctor stopped and started moving the cookie backwards on forwards. “I shouldn’t have left Graham. Are you sure he is alright?”

“Fin says the hospital are happy to discharge him in the morning. We can take you to see him after your statement,” Cragan said.

“That’ll be nice. Thanks.”

“What did you see in the warehouse Doctor?”

“Oh. That.”

*

The Doctor and Graham watched the receding truck and car from the shadows of the back of the parking lot.

“That’s all of them gone, I reckon,” Graham had whispered in her ear. “What do you want to do now Doc?”

“Have a look around of course. Duh!”

Graham had given her a look, so she sheepishly apologised for saying duh. “Not really me, is it?”

“No,” Graham said, walking towards the warehouse. The Doctor pulled out her sonic screwdriver and began to scan.

“All doors locked, triple locked, deadlocked, and alarms set. But those windows, up there...” she waved her arm and hand upwards.

“That’s high!”

The Doctor gulped. “It is, isn’t it? But we need to have a look. I need to have a look. You can guard. Can you whistle? No, can you make a noise like an owl?”

“You what? Sure, I can, but would you hear me?”

“I have excellent hearing, I assure you,” she grinned. “Give us a leg up then.”

Graham had made a step with his hands and hoisted her up the first part of the wall, where she was able to grab hold of some form of metal grating, aircon or something like that.

“You’re heavier than you look, Doc!” Graham had called to her feet.

“Just remember, hoot like an owl,” she called down, and then was wriggling through the tiny window she had opened with her sonic.

*

Here she had to break off and show and explain her sonic screwdriver to Munch and Cragan, before she continued,

*

It was quite a drop the other side of the window, but the Doctor dropped, silently as a cat, landing on her feet, knees bent. She put her sonic to a torch function and shone the light about her. Barrels and barrels of what smelt like maple syrup. She ran her finger along the rim of one. Yes, maple syrup, rather a good vintage. Yum. But why swap maple syrup for children?

If that was going on?

She supposed that the Trion elite went in for alien food exotica in a big way, more so that the Orion Union at least. But she was sure many a humanoid species would enjoy maple syrup in the Union, Draconians might do too, they had a sweet tooth. Nova Martians, she thought, proud of her ‘political correctness’, didn’t like sweet things.

She walked past barrels and barrels of maple syrup, then came to wooden chests, she ran a finger along a seal and licked.

Camellia sinensis. Assam if she was not mistake. Black tea.

Well, she knew one Trion at least who was rather fond of tea.

She came to a sharp flight of stairs, more like a ladder, the tang of transportation tickled her tongue again. She climbed quickly.

At the top was like being in a cellar, but high up. There were hardly any windows, and those there were had been boarded it. It was chillier. There were racks and racks of wine. Pinot Noir, Merlot, Champagne. Then the aroma of coffee took out the matter transportation smell, and she found bins of roasted beans. She took a happy sniff. Java. Lovely.

She rooted about some more, and found truffles, caviar, Turkish Delight (she stole one), and finest dark chocolate in huge blocks.

A ladder led to a higher level. A trap door covered it, so she put her shoulder to it and shoved. It came away with a clatter. This room had strip electric lighting, switched off, and half of the large warehouse loft was separated by a wall of bars. Behind the bars were mattress and dirty blankets and a heavy, cloying, aura of fear and despair and confusion.

But no children.

This was obviously where the children were brought to. The stale tang of matter transportation was everywhere. As was something else. The Doctor turned and found what should be there, packets of white powders and brown resin. She tasted a packet. Cocaine. She tried another. Hashish resin. Then a third. Heroin. Bags of small blue pills were behind the packets. Some form of Barbiturate, she wondered? The last time she had got involved with human drugs has been in her Seventh Persona, and that had been in England in the 1960s.

Where were the foods and drugs going? Was it a straight swap for the children? Did the Syndicate smuggle contraband into the Union? Or elsewhere? Terra was a fascination on Sto, but the cultures of the sentient species, not the food, and it was in an economic Depression, she was sure not even Rickston could afford such luxuries!

She was busy trying to figure out the pattern when she was grabbed from behind, an arm snaked around her neck. She struggled and kicked and yelled and punched until there was a sharp, painful scratch on her neck, and the next thing she remembered was waking up in hospital, panicking because the last time she had been in an American hospital they had killed him.

*

“So, there you go. I didn’t see them. I think there were more than two, but I only saw the torso of one man and felt the other one behind me, but apart from pointless macho posturing and threats, they didn’t question me, did not gloat or declare their plans, and that is usually what happens you know? I don’t think they even realised I wasn’t human. Well, not while I was conscious at least.

“But they didn’t kill me. Which is odd. Perhaps they think I’m working for the Shadow Proclamation. I don’t look Judoon, but now I’m a woman I suppose I could be thought of being one of the senior Investigators. Is the Orion Union a member of the Interstellar Galactic Council? Makes sense, if your planets have one federated group, you’d be open to joining a bigger one, wouldn’t you?” the Doctor stopped her prattle and looked up from staring at her Oreo, which she was still pushing about the table as if it were a toy car. “You have no idea what I am saying, do you?”

“It’s hard, admitting you’ve been a victim, but even harder if you don’t admit it,” Munch said gently.

“Oh no! It’s not that! I’m fine. I’m always fine. Look at me, I’m fine!”

Munch looked across the table at Cragan, who sighed. “If you can’t remember anything after a needle, then we have all we need for the statement. If you don’t mind, we’ll get Doctor Warner to see if she can find the mark and photograph it for the records. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Would you like me to take you to see Mr O’Brien now?” Munch asked.

“Graham? Can you? Yes please!” the Doctor beamed up at him, and then stood, grabbing the rest of the cookies and putting them into her pocket.

SVU Bullpen 7.27pm

The Doctor came out of the interview room into the main open plan office to see Yaz and Ryan sat at a desk with mugs of something and a detective she had yet to meet taking their statements – or she presumed so.

“Doctor!” Ryan called happily, noticing her and standing up.

“Doctor!” Yaz yelled, getting up too and running to her and flinging her arms about her.

“Woah!” the Doctor said, stepping back. “No need to strangle me Yaz, I’m fine.”

“Are you though? Are you really?”

“Yeah, seriously Doctor?” Ryan added.

The Doctor noticed that both her young companions were looking at her with worry and concern, and Ryan was shifting from one foot to the other, his fists clenching and unclenching, as if he wanted to hug her as tightly as Yaz but was afraid of it being the wrong thing. The Doctor instantly wriggled from Yaz’s tight grasp and hugged him briefly too.

“I’m fine. It’s good to see you both. Have you heard about Graham?” she watched their faces. Obviously, they had, but she went on, “He’s in hospital, I’m going to see him. You come too Ryan. Yaz, bring everyone up to speed on our time on Sto please.

Munch touched her elbow carefully. “Fin will drive you. I’ll talk to PC Khan, is it?”

Yaz grinned at Munch, worried as she was, a senior New York detective recognising her a sister officer really made her day. Even if, when she stopped to think about it, she was at school right now, the other side of the ‘pond’. Well, asleep more likely.

Detective Tutola’s car, downtown traffic, 8.12pm

Ryan sat in the back, leaning forward, asking endless questions about Graham, his head, how it would affect him, was he ill in any other way.

“Just chill, man, can’t you. You’ll see your friend soon,” Fin eventually almost snapped.

“He’s not my friend, he’s my Grandad!” Ryan replied in anguish. “We only got things right with us.”

“Na, he can’t be. Look at you, he’s a white dude.”

“Graham was married to Ryan’s natural Grandmother, and looked after him after his mother died,” the Doctor explained.

“Yeah, and me Dad was no good. Graham’s me Grandad, only decent man who looked after me, so you put your American racism where you can shove it!”

“Hey hey, I am not racist! You look at the colour of me!” Fin snapped. He took a centring breathe. “Sorry kid, things are different over here I guess.”

“Multi skin tone families are normal and common in the UK, have been for centuries,” the Doctor said and went on, “I remember my Granddaughter and I spend some time in 18th century Cardiff, there were large Arab sailor, Indian trade, and freed African slave communities, mostly men, most married Welsh women. Susan was fascinated, genetically, by the different ‘breeds’ – we change colour, but it’s random, you can be Loomed one skin tone and regenerate into another, but loom children don’t blend the apparent skin tones of their parents, the Loom decides I think. It was only our second time on Earth, the first time had been the French Revolution, we didn’t stay long, and the French all had the same sicky hue of malnutrition and an empty acceptance of violence. She was so young, I gave her a science project on Earth genetics – humans, wolves, and cats, as you humans have been tinkering with wolf DNA for millennia and… what?” she looked at Fin and Ryan’s faces. “You object to the word breed? Well, you are the same race, the human race, so I won’t use the word incorrectly. Just wait until you realise you are not the only sentient species on Earth! Of course,” she added darkly, “that was before she insisted on going to that human school in the 1960s…”

“Is she always like this, mouth running so fast you understand one word in ten?” Fin asked Ryan.

“Pretty much, yeah. We just nod and smile and say, ‘really Doctor’ and ‘wow Doctor’ mostly.”

“Good plan.”

“Don’t you listen?” the Doctor asked, pouting.

“When it’s important,” Ryan said, putting his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. She unexpectantly flinched.

“There’s something I’m forgetting!” she yelled.

Mercy Hospital, 9.01pm

“Hey mate, come in,” Graham called as Ryan poked his head through the doorframe.

“You okay. You had us well worried for a minute.”

“Yeah, reckon they’re making a fuss coz I’m so old. That or the Doc’s comprehensive medical insurance and they want the money. How did you get here? Where’s Yaz? And the Doc?”

Ryan sat at the end of the bed. “Some Detective called Fin Tutuola drove us. Yaz is filling them in at the station, we got help, big help. Special Victims Unit, they deal with paedos and abducted children. She’s telling them all we know from Sto to here. Doc’s with me, but she said something about the little shop, that she loves the little shops in hospitals. Fin’s having a coffee somewhere. Doc wants you discharged. So, I’ll ask again, Grandad, how are you feeling?”

“Like I got coshed from behind, you wassock, how do you think? My head is killing me! I refused the oxycontin, it’s a con to get you addicted, I saw a documentary with your Nan. Did you know they’ve not even heard of paracetamol, luckily there’s some in my jacket – I always carry paracetamol and a sandwich, you never know with the Doc! Why on Earth does she want a ‘little shop’?”

“For these,” the Doctor called from the door, peeping in, her hands behind her back. “Is it alright if I come in?”

“Sure, Doc.”

“Oh Graham, I’m so sorry you got hurt. I should never have left you. So… I got you these!” she produced a huge bouquet of red roses from behind her bag with one hand, and thrust them towards Graham. “Sorry!”

Graham blushed and Ryan snorted. “Doctor, I’m not sure red roses mean sorry in the language of flowers?”

“Flowers have a language. Well, some do, I’ve been to galaxies where walking, talking, humanoid planets are the indigenous life form, and all plants sort of communicate with each other and… and I got you these too,” she said, pulling a bag of grapes from one pocket and a box of chocolates from another. “Oh, and this,” and she rooted through her bumbag and pulled out a small patch. “Pain go away from the 97th century,” she held it out on her finger. “Put it on the injury, it’ll dissolve and take the pain away for 24 hours.”

Manhattan SVU briefing room 9.01pm

After stumbling over her words and trying to explain, badly, how they got a message, and the Doctor called on friends to help, and the evidence somehow led them to Queens and a small-scale gang, Cragan interrupted,

“We’re all tired, PC Khan. Do you and the Doctor have somewhere to stay?”

“Yeah, we’re in the Franklin,” Yaz replied.

Munch whistled! “Impressive. Come on, I’ll drop you and get Fin to do the same to Ryan and the Doctor. You look after her, she seems to be in denial, and I’m worried.” He looked at Cragan.

“We both are,” Cragan said. “I’m no expert, she’s not human, but I guess she ought to be feeling something?”

“Oh, she will be, she just kind of hides things. Me and Ryan will look after her, and she has another friend here too. They’ll help.”

“Then in the morning, the Doctor can walk us through your case, and we’ll see how we can help. Shall we say, 9 o’clock sharp?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter not US picked at all by anyone but me. I tried my best, look I even wrote fanny pack without sniggering (and if you knew what it means in British English...!) but seriously, I don't want to offend anyone, so if you spot a language error from the pov or speech from any of the Law and Order: SVU team, tell me, and I will change it.


	4. Sto, three weeks before

The Doctor sat awake watching the lights of Eldor, the city by the southern polar region. The window of the air car was triple reinforced transparent aluminium, and the heating up high, but she still felt the chill of the city. She pitied these street children more than the other cities they had visited. She was beginning to sense a pattern, but what to do was still unclear. She needed help, and she wasn’t sure where to go yet. She thought back to the beginning of their journey through the bigger camps of Kid Futures, a week ago now.

After seeing the lovely Alonso and the not so lovely Rickston, they had visited the largest Kids Futures settlement, to the east of Angawat and begun to build up a picture. Yaz had been taking copious notes ever since, and trying to make connections between ages, locations, and what the children did to survive, and whether they had much support around them, but nothing much was making sense. 

Nothing much, that was, apart from the Doctor’s own prejudice which she thought she had dealt with eons ago. Even the phrase she first used and continued to do so was racist.

Ice Warriors. Not all Martians were warriors, ice or otherwise…

*

“Hello, I’m the Doctor, and these are my friends Graham, Yaz, and Ryan...” the Doctor had begun, looking up, trying to smile, and not swallow the lump of atavistic fear in her throat, at the large Ice Warrior looming over her at the doorway or the Kid Futures Settlement and Support Camp. The very word ‘camp’ sent shivers down her spine, with its connections in her brain to ‘death’ and 'concentration’ and ‘resettlement’ and now there was this lumbering brute opening the door to them. Was she smiling? It was hard to tell. She also hadn't seen a ‘naked’ Martian before, that was, one free of all cyborg implants and armour. Instead of a helmet, her head was covered by a cloche type hat and instead of armour, she wore a long, functional, simple shift dress and cardigan.

The Martian female said, looking down at the four of them, “Oh! Yesss. Trau Ssslade messsaged me to sssay to exsspect you. Come in. I am Mama Koko, I am Housemother and Matron. Pleassse   
come in Frau Doctor.”

The Doctor gave her friends a brief look of puzzlement, but the three humans, having never been with her in the late 21st or early 22nd or 50th centuries, had no fears or preconceptions, so Mama Koko was just another alien to them, one who worked for a charity looking after orphans and street children. In other words, a good person.

“Oh, it’s just Doctor!” she breezed, grinning, glad to find a way through her sudden discombobulation.

They followed the huge reptilian female into the building. It was, in fact, a small building that was joined to a wall running around, and then they came through the gatehouse or porch and into an open space with many smaller buildings, both single and two and three story, with a large playground in the middle. Some children were playing on the large climbing frame with its three slides, whooping and laughing and looking happy and safe. Next to the playground was a large area covered by canvas, like a half-marquee or huge tent, with a trestle tables and chairs laid out. Some children sat one of the tables colouring, a little tortoise like humanoid among them. A figure at the end was scrubbing another table, while a child followed, laying out bowls and spoons.

“Mama Hladar,” Mama Koko called out. “Rickssson has appointed the investigators we asssked for! Come!”

The figure put down the cloth and, touching the child on the cheek and saying something soft, approached, the child running off towards one of the buildings on the far wall. As she came nearer, the Doctor could see she was a Draconian lady. Although an Honoury Noble of the High Court of Draconia herself, she had never met a female. Perhaps she was no longer a Noble herself, now she had regenerated as a woman? She bowed to the Draconian with due ceremony, anyway.

“Madam, I am honoured.” She could feel her friends giving each other curious looks, why are the people looking after the street children reptiles, and why are they so different to each other. “Forgive me, my friends come from Earth, they have never been to the Union. Yaz, Graham, Ryan, the Lady Hladar is a Draconian noble – forgive me my lady, I recognise the crest on your dress – from Draconia, and the esteemed Mama Koko here is from Nova Martia, her ancestors originally come from your solar system.”

“Until the Red Dawn,” hissed Mama Koko, while her colleague added humbly and quietly, 

“And it is just Mama Hladar please.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor said, not sure if she was apologising for the ecological disaster that left the Martians looking for a new home or for being so formal to the Draconian young female who obviously wished to ignore her planet’s formalities and restrictions.

“No matter. Welcome to Anagawat, to Sto, and to the Orion Union,” Hladar said, inclining her head. “Now, how may we help you?”

The Doctor looked at Yaz and then Graham.

“If I might see your records of any missing you have, and…?” Yaz said, glancing at Graham.

“And if you might show me and Ryan around, explain how your charity works, as Trau Slade didn’t really have time to fill us in, and the Doc here would like to talk to the children. That alright, Mamas Koko and Hladar?” he said.

Hladar inclined her head. “Follow me Frau Yaz. I will send Papa Rybab over to show the Traus around and explain how we do things. Will you carry on preparing the canteen for the midday meal please Koko?”

“Yess, of coursse,” the Martian inclined her head slowly, and turned to the Doctor. “Pleasse, come with me, I will introduce you to some of our older children. Then you can meet Tradour, sshe lost her ssisterss. Sshe barely sspeakss, sshe is very ssmall. I feel sshe may open to you.” She turned and lumbered slowly towards the playground. The Doctor followed, chiding herself for her prejudice, wondering if she was as racist as a human, liking only species who looked like Gallifreyans.

At the climbing frame the children all rushed up to Koko, smaller ones hugging her, one small boy holding out his hand and demanding a sweetie. Koko gently patted his head with her enormous claw.

“Enough of your cheek, Andy, it iss ssoon time for the midday meal, I will not sspoil your appetite!”

“Aw! Don’t ask don’t get!” he grumbled good naturedly.

“This is the Doctor. She is here to find out what is happening to the children who are vanishing. If anyone has anything to say, you may trust her, she is not the police or social services. In Mama Hladar’s people’s history, she is an angel and an honourable lord.”

“Am I? Honestly? I only...” the Doctor began, marvelling at how she was barely noticing the hiss – was the TARDIS telepathic circuits compensating or was she merely losing her prejudice? Despite her time on Peladon, he had barely shaken it off in many more regenerations. Maybe being female made her more open minded – it made Missy more emotional after all, so anything was possible!

Then again, she had met some very racist, xenophobic, human females, while most Gallifreyans whatever gender they wore, were highly xenophobic and arrogant, managing to be polite to sentient aliens whilst showing an absolutely belief in their own superiority, and of course, while theoretically, in those tin pots of hate, Daleks were biologically male and female green blobs of hate, though they had no concept of gender, they did get together out of their travel machines to reproduce somehow.

“What rot!” a girl of about eleven interrupted both the Doctor's hubris and distracted thoughts, she wore ragged trousers and a thick sweater, with a peaked cap at a jaunty off angle on her head, and was leant on the largest slide, arms folded, trying to look hard and cynical. “No way would Draconia have a female hero, rot rot rot! Stop treating us like babies Mama! She’s from the Union, right, they finally took Trau Slade and you seriously!”

“Trau Slade told me about the Doctor, and he was a man, a skinny, beautiful, man who tried to save the Titanic and saved his life and that was why he started Kids Futures,” a boy called from the top of the climbing frame, a book in his hand.

The Doctor waved at him. “Me, both me!” she called. “I can change, renew myself, regenerate.”

“A shape shifter?” called down the boy. “Froopy!”

“Rot and rubbish and all that!” sneered the girl.

“Oh, very probably,” the Doctor said, leaning forward and producing a jelly baby from behind the cynical girl’s ear. “You, my dear, are just at the age of not believing!”

All the younger children crowded round, chanting ‘me too’ and ‘me me me!’

The Doctor glanced at Koko. “Later, after your meal, but what is this behind your ear?” she asked the youngest, the little cheeky one called Andy, and produced a small tin spaceship.

“I will leave you; I must prepare the canteen. Will you and your companions join us for the meal?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I know that things are tight.”

“It is simple vegetarian fare, but you are most welcome.”

“Then thank you.”

Koko inclined her head and walked slowly and heavily off to the tented eating area, the small green child climbing up from the table and tottering towards her.

“That’s Ixsiss, her son,” the boy from the top of the frame called. “Do you want us to tell you about missing kids, who we know went missing!”

“We don’t go out of here anymore,” Andy added, slipping his hand in the Doctor’s.

“Yes please,” the Doctor replied, sitting down on the padded floor. The children began to gather. The boy from the top of the climbing frame beginning his descent, demanding if the Draconian and Trau Slade’s stories were true.

*

Hladar took Yaz to what was obviously an office and asked if she wanted holo, screen, or plastisheet printout notes, indicating she sit at a large, battered, obviously seen better days third hand, table and chair.

“Plasti… is that like paper?” Hladar nodded, so Yaz went on, “That I think, sometimes I miss stuff on a screen and I’m not familiar with holo-notes – a hologram of a page, I suppose?”

“Indeed. What do you need?”

“Well, anything on children who you know went missing, really. But, first, can you sit down and tell me what you know. Hearing a personal story is so helpful, Mama Hladar.”

“Very well. Shall I make us some tea?”

“That sound like a good idea,” Yaz smiled up at the tall female with the high domed head and pointed crest, her brown face dappled with beautiful, tiny, almost iridescent scales. She wore what Yaz thought of as a kimono in pink and red and orange, a white, multi pocketed, functional, apron tied over the front of her dress. She thought her species beautiful, and so different from the huge, bulky, lumbering, green, reptilian female that was Mama Koko. Koko was dressed so functionally and dully; yet seemed so serene and dignified if not pretty. Tortoise like in appearance, but someone who radiated care. Hladar was younger, and Yaz thought was more here for her own reasons, she didn’t seem to engage so much with the children. Hladar too looked more like a sentient reptile might look in SF at home, Yaz supposed. So far, where they had been, they had met species who looked human, who seemed mammalian, even if their biology might have been wildly different. So far anything this alien, this different, had not been kind or safe. Such as the Stenza. It pleased Yaz to think of the diversity. Rabeel Alameen. Lord of the Worlds. ‘And We never cease nor tire of creation’.

Hladar placed two huge box files from the cupboard by the door on the table and then left to get tea. Yaz opened the first, it was a list of registered clients of the charity’s, those for whom they had no bed spaces, and the dates they had last been seen, along with their known sleeping and begging spots in the city.

*

Meanwhile, Papa Rybab, a blue skinned man with two antenna on the either side of the top of his head, who introduced himself as Rybab Ch'izhothik, with a firm warrior arm grip with both Graham and Ryan, explaining he was the male children’s mentor and also the handyman, welcomed them and offered to show them around and answer any questions they had, although he seemed apprehensive under his show of confidence. Graham was at once able to put him at his ease, as they walked about the place, asking questions about security, the troubles some of the more damaged children might cause, if the place was locked, if any children went missing from this or any Kid Futures camp and settlement.

“They are safe here, but we have no room for them all. More and more children come to us or end up on the streets daily. I wish we had room for them all,” Rybab said sadly.

“Why?” Ryan asked.

Rybab sighed deeply, and stopped walking, leaning on the school room door. It was empty, today was a public holiday. “Sometimes their parents have died, or have no more money, or lost their homes, and cannot support them. Sometimes the parents have been arrested – often people get more and more angry with the cuts to welfare and health, the lack of food and medicine, and we have rioting. Often, they steal food for their children. But more and more we are seeing drugs from outside the Union ending up here on Sto among the unemployed and homeless adults – it numbs the pain and boredom I suppose, but they forget their children. It is so sad. Then sometimes the child has a cyborg parent, and the cyborgs are being rounded up now...”

“What?” Graham demanded, shocked.

“It is kept out of the media. The suspicion of AIs and robots are being moved to the cyborgs. No one blames Max Capricorn Enterprises or the other big businesses who had invested heavily in it. But it came out that Capricorn himself was a cyborg, that makes it easier to blame other people. The other planets in the Union are getting fed up with bail outs and demanding more austerity, but it is making things worse. Some of the riots are now against the Union too. So many poorer, vulnerable, people are dying as a result.”

Graham patted Rybab on the shoulder. “I hear you mate. You’d think it would make sense for the Union to send in more aid.”

“They cut our budget only last week, after we sent the evidence of the missing children again to the Union Assembly. We’re lucky, Rickson is still making a profit and after basic living for himself and his secretary, he pours it all into us, but we have so many settlements in every city on Sto now, and his profits only go so far. He is losing investors now, as his charitable attitude make him less trustworthy apparently.”

Graham shelved the information about Slade, but filed it for later to tell the Doctor, he thought she would want to know, as she thought little of the man. Instead, he asked about the Union, “Do you think they might be doing it, disappearing the children?”

“Anything is possible, but I thought it was more likely the Syndicate, but no one ever sees an Orion anywhere near where the children are going from.”

“Wait, what is this Syndicate?”

“The Orion Syndicate? Business. Crime. Drugs. Sex workers. Banned goods from non-Union worlds. Drug running into the Union. Coming in from Trion, some say. Back street cyborg operations. Illicit cyborg maintenance. Rumour has it that more than one Assembly member is in the pocket of the Syndicate.”

Graham glanced at Ryan, alarmed. Organised crime, now that was a lead.

“But they don’t need to take children, they prefer children to go to them. Plenty of kids come through here but then get apprenticeships with the Syndicate, not realising they are selling their lives and souls to them forever. Why would they take unwilling ones, younger ones?”

“Have you heard of paedophiles?” Ryan asked carefully.

From the look of confusion on Rybab’s face, and the slow and confused way he repeated back the word verbatim, it looked as if there was not even the word at all in Andoran or Sto or any other Union language.

“Oh mate, sorry to tell you this, but some sick adults have sex with children,” Ryan said slowly and gently.

Rybab shook his head slowly. “I have never heard of such a thing. What adults? What species? Not even the Orions would do such a thing! Is it a mental illness?”

*

“I have heard of this rumour, but the Union Joint Fleet guards our space,” Hladar whispered into her tea.

“Tell me,” Yaz said, “even if it is just a rumour, it may help.” She was getting to like Hladar, her culture was familiar to her, as was her desire to break out against the restrictions placed on her gender, like the whole burden of ‘family honour’. Yaz’s own parents were liberal, but it didn’t mean her extended family and community were.

Hladar lowered her eyes and whispered even more quietly, “Species '456'.”

“What? Who?”

“We don’t know who they are, what they look like. They are only numbered for the etherband they contact a planet on. They… they treat humanoid children as drugs, suspending their lives, getting high on the child’s hormones and brain chemistry,” Hladar forced herself to explain. “Stories of nightmares and horror vids and holocomics. I think they did come to Sto about two hundred years or more ago, before Sto joined the Union. The government was supposed to make a deal with them, sell the poor children of working men and women displaced and replaced by new the robot workforce. It can't be true, or Alpha Centauri and the big five of the Security Council nor the Union Assembly would have let Sto join. But sometimes I wonder, all these children, all going at night, with a curfew in most cities due to the riots and only guards on the streets...”

“They go at night?”

“It’s in the files,” Hladar said, tapping the pile on the table with her iridescent scaled hand, before putting down her tea bowl and scuttling out of the room, muttering, “Forgive me, I must attend to the midday meal preparation...”

*

The cheeky girl with the cap showed the Doctor to Tradour’s room doorway, a small side room of what was obviously the charity settlement Infirmary. A darker skinned, older, Sto woman looked up from her desk in the main treatment room and ward.

“You must be Frau Doctor, Trau Slade told us to extend every courtesy. Run along with you now Astrid...”

“Astrid…?” the Doctor asked, surprised. “I thought you were called Tree!”

“Duh! Tree’s short for Astrid!” she said, sticking out her tongue and running out of the Infirmary as fast as she could.

“She’s a cheeky one, that girl!”

“I knew an Astrid once, also from Sto,” the Doctor began sadly.

“It is a common name; my own daughter is called Astrid. I’m Doctor Angelic Brody. Mama Koko said you would want to talk to Tradour. Come through here.”

“Knock knock,” Angelic called out, “there is someone to see you. She is called the Doctor. How are you feeling my love, are you up to visitors?”

She led the Doctor into the tiny, dark, room, the shutters closed, a single bed dominating half the room, a girl of perhaps four or five lay on her side, her back to the door, hugging a rag doll. The Doctor could see she was awake, her eyes were open and staring blankly at the wall, and she could feel the despair and hopelessness of the child.

“She is in shock?” she asked Angelic in a whisper.

“Depression. PTSD. She’s not spoken since the night watch brought her in, her sisters missing. We had no space for them, and they wanted to stay together, obviously we will always make you for a street-child so young, alone, if we are aware of them. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.”

“Hello Tradour? My name is the Doctor. I can help, if you let me.”

Tradour turned and looked up with big, sad, green, eyes set in her pale face. She did not speak.

“I can take the memories away, if you like, or you can share them, sharing can sometimes help us, talking things out loud.”

Tradour shook her head and backed up against the wall, hugging her doll tighter.

“I know you’re frightened dear. But look, I can make pictures with your mind. Close your eyes. That’s a good girl. I’m going to touch your face now, but I won’t hurt you. Now, what can you see?”

“A horse! A white horse with a horn, dancing. And a lady with gold wings!” Tradour said, her voice croaky with lack of use.

“It’s called a unicorn, and the lady is called a fairy. Do you want to give them names? Let’s give them a rainbow slide to play on, shall we?”

“Yes! And they can fly in the sky! She has wings now! She is called Mandar, and the lady is called Francie!”

“Mandar is now an alicorn, and Francie the Fairy. Alliteration, I love a bit of alliteration, me. Where do the beautiful names come from?”

“Mandar is my sister, Francie is her best friend who we called sister too, she was like our big sister, she looked after us, she slept with us in the big doorway of the Coffee Factory. The manager let us sleep there, they gave us stale cakes and sandwiches every night. But not coffee, it is a strong drink from Trion. Posh grown-ups drink it, it makes them wired and shouty. But they smoke stoma with it, take spice. Mama and Papa were lost on spice, it slowed them down they forgot to eat,” Tradour spilled out, half telepathically, guided gently by the Doctor and her fairy tale images she painted in the girls mind. We had to run away when the debt people came, all I had was Daga, my dolly, and Mandar had her doll, Baba. She got lost when they took her. I saw Baba fall in the road, but I was so scared to get her and then the street cleaning drones ripped her up! BABA DIED!!!”

“S’sh, little one, but now you must tell me then forget Tradour. You will tell me then forget.”

*

All the children and volunteers and workers were already sat around the table with Graham, Ryan, and Yaz when the Doctor came to the food tent, bringing Tradour with her, holding her hand and hugging her doll in the other. The childish chatter fell, and all the children stared.

“It is good to see you Tradour,” Dr Angelic Brody said. “Isn’t it, children?”

There was scuffling and murmuring, and some of the smaller girls got up to crowd around Tradour, so Koko clapped her large clawed hands together. “Let us give Tradour space. Now, please join us Doctor, and we can serve the midday meal.”

*

After the meal Koko had packed a bag and left her clinging son in Papa Rybab’s care and the five of them left. Koko was not only in charge of the ‘flagship’ Kids Futures Settlement Camp, but co-chair and administrator with Rickson Slade, so she was going with them on their tour of other cities and settlements for more information and evidence. A week later, here they were, arriving at Eldor, the coldest and most southern city on Sto. Koko at least would be happy in the cold, the Doctor mused as they climbed out of the air car, slapping her sides vigorously to get the blood circulating in the frigid air. 

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham all had their pet theories, but the Doctor was undecided. For now she had ruled out children going into the food chain somehow, else the toddlers would be taken, so would homeless adults, and she still wondered about child soldiers or robotic components, although there was certainly no Cyberman activity in this part of the galaxy in this century, she had recently defeated them a few times on Earth and destroyed Mondas a matter of decades ago. They were currently on Planet 14 and Telos, regrouping and recovering. Besides, they preferred adults and discarded children, by which she meant killed. And anyway, would Stoians, or Orions or Bolians, be compatible? Surely the converted humans, Terran or Mondassian, not humanoids? Of course, there were others, even Daleks had been known to cannibalise humans from time to time, breakaway groups rejected by the Emperor for their lack of Skaroian DNA purity! But again, adults. She supposed there might be an unscrupulous adult in the Union making organic-robotic synthetics for some reason, or perhaps powering super AIs with a child’s imaginative brain. But to take so many, and surely the regular police across the Union would trace that? As for child soldiers, nearby was the Horsehead Nebula, where the Uvodni and the Malakh had been raging a war for countless generations and she had heard rumours of the Uvodni, desperate, using child soldiers. 

Other than that, in the Nebula, were the Ood and Sense Spheres, living peacefully, yet to encounter the scourge that humanity could be in its own galaxy. Abducting street and poor children for nefarious, sexual, reasons was a human scourge, and Ryan remained convinced it was somehow the reason behind it – she was filing that for another day, when this was dealt with, why he was so convinced, what lay in his past that Graham and poor Grace might not have known about! Yaz had told her the horror of Species ‘456’, but she was sure that Orions and Bolians and Andorians too would be taken, and besides, from what see could remember, those evil monsters only took with permission, they traded. There was a possibility, a remote possibility, that the Orion Union had made a deal, but it seemed unlikely.

Over the past week they had visited the other charity locations in the capital and then several other places Koko thought might be useful, they had talked to police, and children’s and education and health services, in each city they visited, but with no success, and the Doctor received the impression their finances and staff were stretched already with the effects of austerity and cutbacks to care about a few poor street kids! Then she had Slade facilitate her contacting Union Joint Space Fleet Security Services but had been given a stern none of Kid Futures business brush off, ‘the Fleet took children's welfare seriously and protected children from being stolen by species – or trafficked into being child soldiers’ - was the Fleet’s official line and they sent downloads of infodumps to prove it.

Oh, if only her friendship with Alpha Centuri wasn’t almost still two millennia away!

So, if the reports were right, and the children were not becoming cyber parts, child soldiers, or drugs for evil monsters, what was going on, where were they going? Were her any of her friends right? Could there be another planet she was yet to consider involved, not in the Union but not considered hostile?

Graham was also convinced of mundane reasons, focusing like Ryan, on the criminal organisation, the Orion Syndicate, but for other reasons than sexual, he postulated what he called ‘county lines’ which apparently was a British drug gang phenomenon of getting vulnerable young children to transport illicit drugs, either that or taking the children to be trained as domestic slaves, which was a human global phenomenon, and not something she discounted, child slaves were disposable labour, cheaper than paying adults or maintaining robots, and easier to enslave than adults. At the end of the day, the logic of capitalism was the bottom credit, maximise profit and reduce costs, at any means possible.

Trion was nearby in the other direction to the Horsehead Nebula. Trion could be a devious planet, building trade relations based on trade colonialism or hiding among Level 4-6 pre interstellar societies for desired goods.

So many threads and loose ends, more questions than answers. Once she operated like this, once she had players in place across a large temporal-spatial chessboard. But that was so long ago, she was not sure if she could still think that way. Still, one more Settlement to question and explore. Maybe the answer would come to her...


	5. Ace on Orion: Two weeks before

The Time War had fractured their timelines, particularly in their Seventh Incarnation, there had been something about when she had been him, time bent around him as much as he tried to manipulate Time. He was, after all, Time’s Champion, the original Destroyer of Worlds, the On-Coming Storm, moving in mysterious ways and very likely triggering the entire Time War itself.

With that in mind, it was a question of Aces – Ace who had travelled with Hex, or Ace who had travelled with Benny? Ace who was on Earth in London running A Charitable Earth, or Ace who resided in Paris with her time-hopper, protecting the fractures in space-time and the Vortex, or even the Ace she also sadly remembered dying on the Moon of Earth? Somewhere among all the Aces, she was sure that there was one timeline where Ace had gone to the Academy and became a Time Lord, but as she focused on the ever shifting patterns of the multiverse of space-time, she was sure that a Time Lord Ace would have meant no Time War.

Could Ace have been so important? Over the last few millennia it had suddenly been about their companions, time bending and shifting and needing them – Rose and her Bad Wolf, Martha walking the Earth, Donna turning left with something on her back, Donna becoming the Doctor-Donna,   
Oh Donna…

Amy somehow holding all of space-time in her head and rebooting the universe… 

Clara, oh, dear Clara leaping into and fracturing their timelines...

It made the Doctor’s head spin.

Did it all start with Ace?

Would it end with Ace?

Right now, she needed Ace above all companions, Ace would know what to do. The Ace of Benny’s timeline might be the most use. But how could she find her? The Ace of A Charitable Earth would be easier to locate. That was, if her new companions came from the same Earth as her last companions, and sometimes she wondered, if he had been sliding through dimensions for some millennia and incarnations for quite a while.

Somehow the Gallifreyan word companion did not translate so well into the English of her new fam as it did in the past either.

Stop running on tangents Doctor!

Be still. Quieten your mind, empty your thoughts, still your body.

Listen!

She could hear The Hermit speak as if she were that distressed boy running up the mountain from Lungbarrow.

Listen!

She slowed her body more.

A rim of frost began to cover her body as she meditated, lost in emptying her mind of extraneous thoughts and ideas.

Children going missing.

Ace would know what to do.

Hold on to nothing else.

  
*

Graham, Ryan, and Yaz were sleeping, Koko returned to her home and her son at the charity settlement. The Doctor knew she needed help, and this was something that crossed planets and cultures and involved Earth, of that she felt sure now. She did not know why; it was just a feeling. A feeling she was getting from Graham and Ryan’s theories, mostly.

She was now sat cross-legged on the floor of their hotel suite in Angawat on Sto, her breathing slowed to one breath per minute, her body temperature dropped, meditating, The Hermit would be proud of her.

Yaz, getting up to go to the bathroom, stood, startled, staring, a few minutes, before knocking on Graham and Ryan’s bedroom door. Graham looked at her, touched her icy cheek, and ushered everyone back to bed.

“She’s looking for help, she said something to me,” he whispered. “Let’s leave her. Yaz, work on your police incident board thing in the morning, okay, we’ll worry if she’s like this after 24 hours, okay?” Graham squeezed her shoulder.

“Okay,” Yaz said, looking back at the ice-covered Doctor, taking a shuddering breath. “Good night.”

Somewhere, at the very back of her subconscious, the Doctor registered this and thought, “Good. Useful,” to the idea of an incident board, and continued to listen to her still point.

Ace.

  
*

  
Many hours later, as her friends were tiptoeing about her, having showers and ordering breakfast, helping Yaz set up an incident board, and debating whether to put the screen on or not, the Doctor’s eyes snapped open.

“Trikhobi!” she yelled.

“What?” asked Yaz, startled.

“Wait, she might still be in her trance or what not,” Graham said.

Ryan just stared and carried on eating; he was getting addicted to Sto’s spicy bread, especially with the cheeses. It reminded him of bun and cheese with Nan and her church friends, and even of his Great Nan, when she had come over to stay when he had been tiny. It was making him feel loved. Sometimes he was so broken by grief still, but daren't not talk to Graham, who was probably equally broken inside. He watched the Doctor with awe, which was easy to do, as the rim of ice which covered her was evaporating, like she was emerging from a mist.

“It’s fine, Graham. I’m fine, Yaz,” the Doctor said. She then added, as she stood up, stretching and clicking her back, “Graham?”

“Yes Doc?”

“Tea? Please? Twelve sugars.”

Graham smiled and fetched a cup.

  
*

“Trikhobi was a young Venusian I knew a long, long time ago. I was so young, even if I looked like an old man, and I hadn’t really figured out how to work the TARDIS,” the Doctor explained, after her fifth cup of tea.

“You mean, you have now?” Graham teased.

The Doctor pulled a face at him, and went on. “I’d left my Granddaughter behind, to get married, to help with the reconstruction of the Earth following the Dalek Invasion of the 22nd century, and… well, before that, we needed to get on the ship of the aliens who planned to eat the Venusians and scatter their DNA into the primordial soup of Earth, so I had two planets to save and needed… I’m not explaining this well. Trikhobi was a fine mathematician philosopher and made a calculation which involved your special-temporal location and the DNA structure of the person you wished to get to. Oh, it was much more complex than I’m explaining, but that’s the basics.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Yaz said, from her incident board, frowning. “So, are you suggesting we use some of the DNA of missing children to locate them, is that what you are saying?”

The Doctor shook her head. “No, but that might be an idea. Well done Yaz,” the Doctor grinned at her. “No, I have a past friend who used to travel with me, and she is just the person we need. All evidence is pointing to the Syndicate, and my friend is someone capable of infiltrating them. If we take her back a couple of years, or rather, I bring her to two years ago from whenever and wherever I find her, she can move up and report back to us now.”

“Isn’t that, um, cheating? You know, laws of time and that,” Ryan asked.

“Bending a little. I used to work a lot like that when I travelled with this person, and if I get the right timeline, she’s worked in the same way since.”

“Same timeline?” Yaz asked, confused.

The Doctor looked away, hiding her pain.

“Time War?” Graham mouthed at Yaz, over the Doctor’s head. “Eat something Doc, then we’ll go get your friend.”

“I need to find something with her DNA first,” the Doctor said, taking a bite of fruit bun and cheese that Graham had shoved into her hand.

*

Ace was having herself some R&R with the young staff sergeant. She didn’t fight for money any more, those days were long behind her, but the cause of these liberation fighters was just. Her once employer, the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, to her endless shame, was ripping out hunks of the land of these farmers, who had been on the planet for two centuries, back in the 2750s, and the Earth Empire had guaranteed them client status a decade ago, until diamonds, dilithium along with vast deposits of yttrium, terbium, europium and gadolinium, to say nothing of silver, was discovered by some highly illegal high orbital prospecting. In these days – the 2970s – all the Earth Empire cared about was its expansion and control of the many human colonies and conquered alien worlds and the collection of wealth and exploitation of raw resources. Of course, the Professor, with Roz and Chris, had/would bring down the Empire in a couple of decades, but that was no excuse for ignoring suffering and injustice right now. It was the little people in the middle of the wheel turns of history Ace was bothered with these days, whenever and wherever she washed up with her time hopper.

The original settlers cared little, they had wanted to get back to simpler times, leaving the overpopulated, over polluted Earth, and had carved out a community Ace found made her think of the Amish in America in her own birth century, rather than the hippie dippy one of their beliefs of dropping out of the rat race and technologically dependant society, except these guys were more Buddhist and Taoist with a society that had been run on Confucius lines, which made the IMC’s betrayal all the more acute – they could not conceive of a business behaving so immorally and dishonourably. With echoes of another Empire over a millennia before, back on the Home World, the Interplanetary Mining Corporation, with the blessing of the Empress, who needed the minerals for expansion and trade, too say nothing of wars of conquest, began to flood the local markets with cheap Soma and get the local farm boys and girls addicted and wasted. Soon crops had been left to waste, and farmland sold for mines, in exchange of Soma, all over the planet.

Hence Ace’s need to get involved. The local Militia had already formed a resistance, but they needed sorting out, and so Ace took charge of Ops, as assistant to the C and C, a tough no nonsense woman of Chinese descent called Xi.

They were winning now, the IMC were pushed back and retreating, mines abandoned and ships leaving every day. The Empire was now sending an Adjudicator to negotiate the peace settlement, they were due any day. It was now just the drug gangs who came in under the protective shield of the IMC who needed mopping up now. She’d move on now, like the Doctor, best slip away before the mundane politics of recovery and rebuild started.

But still, Li was beautiful, and she was happy to enjoy his company for one more night. She straddled him and smiled down, happy and relaxed and about to get more relaxed when she heard that sound, the sound of space and time ripped apart to let in a capsule, the wheezing and groaning sounds rising and falling with her own body and responses. She thought maybe it was an hallucination from exhaustion until Li swore and sat up, pushing her off him.

“What the f-?” he began, staring.

Ace turned around. A large blue box stood in the centre of her tent, it’s light still flashing, poking its way up through the poly-synthetic-canvas. She laid a comforting hand on Li’s thigh.

“’S’okay, it’s a mate of mine,” she said, as the TARDIS door opened.

A blonde woman bounced out, dressed in a long hooded pale coat over a tee shirt with stripes and bright rainbow braces, her trousers ill-fitting and too short, or shorts that were too long, and she had some great looking boots.

“Ace!” she cried happily, then sighed with relief, “It worked! Oh Ace… Oh…” she tailed off, seeing Ace’s state of undress and her bedfellow’s equal state of undress. She theatrically shielded her eyes and turned slightly. “Ace!” she reproved.

“You’ve changed sex Doctor!” Ace exclaimed. She grabbed her black combats and pulled them on, along with a sports bra in black and stood up. “Li, it’s been great, we had something good here, but you know it was just a fling, right? I never promised to stay to the end. You guys can mop up the Orion Syndicate now that the IMC are defeated. The Adjudicator will be here soon. Give my best to Commander Xi An.”

“Wha- why?” Li stuttered, looking confused and a little like a kicked puppy.

Ace ignored him and turned her attention back to the Doctor, “I’m needed. Aren’t I Professor?”

“Yes. If you’re not busy?” the Doctor smiled apologetically at the confused young man in Ace’s bed.

“Na, finished here now,” Ace replied dismissively.

“Your.. friend?... can come too, if you like?” the Doctor offered, still smiling at the young man.

Li stared at the magic box which had behaved exactly like a transmat capsule or escape pod should never do, and shook his head. He quickly dressed and rushed out, with a kiss to Ace and a promise to explain to the Commander. Ace quickly shoved her belongings into her transdimensional backpack, grabbed her very battered and old bomber jacket covered with badges, pushed her feet into socks and combat boots and stood in front of the Doctor, who had been exploring the tent and the tacticals covering the field table and pinned to the fake canvas.

“Right, let’s go. You can tell me firstly why you’re here, and then, why you’re wearing a woman’s body, in that order, but first you make me coffee. Deal, Professor,” she said, putting her arm around the Doctor, who was even shorter than ever.

The Doctor smiled, and gestured to the open TARDIS door. “After you, Ace.”

  
*

  
“Woah! You’ve redecorated again. Don’t like it. Too OTT for me. Oh, ’lo new companions, I’m Ace,” Ace said as she saw a young black man, and older white male, and a gorgeous young South Asian women. “Hi,” she twinkled at the woman. “How long have you been his – um, her – companions, then?”

“Since I regenerated into a woman,” the Doctor said from behind her, leaning over her to lock the door and key in the dematerialisation code. “Fam, this is Ace, who I told you about. She travelled with me when I was a man – they still don’t really believe me,” she added in a dramatic sotto voce to Ace.

“Fam? Is that what you’re calling your companions now? Well weird. Well, yeah, Fam, she was a he. I travelled with him when he was a short Scottish bloke with a wicked white hat and a stupid umbrella, but I’ve met several more before and after mine. All men, although maybe blondie cricketer was nonbinary, I guess, and gay as a rainbow! Velvet and lace might have been gender fluid, thinking about it. Not that that matters. Why I am wittering Professor?”

“You’re nervous, Ace. Sorry to unsettle you with my new gender,” she apologised, trying to sound like Ace’s version of them. She spread her arm and introduced, “Ryan, Graham, and Yasmin, they’re from the early 21st century, Sheffield.”

“Northerners? Blimey!”

“Despite appearances to the contrary, Ace is from 1980s Perivale,” the Doctor beamed.

“Oh, right, I’m from Walthamstow originally,” Graham said, “Different end, but I’m not a northerner. Or not originally, anyway.”

“Alright then, Essex boy,” Ace grinned at Graham then turned back to the Doctor, “We can all stand about like right plonks, or we can get that coffee, eh Professor? Where we off to?”

“The Orion Union, early twentieth century, but exactly when and where depends on you, so we’re just cruising in the Vortex.”

“’Kay. Coffee?” Ace emphasised. 

  
*

  
The Doctor made coffee for Ace, and tea for herself and everyone else, and found some chairs, and made Yaz get out her incident board, and explained, as best she could, whenever the Doctor got side-tracked Ace noticed that the old geezer, Graham, pulled her back into focus. The young dude, Ryan, chipped in with some theories and ideas, and Yaz kept it all calm and matter of fact. She was a police officer, so not perfect, but she certainly was not just a pretty face. All the evidence, logistics, and Intel was all down to her, and neat work it was too.

“The Orion Syndicate is operating in the Earth Empire, so you’re not going to defeat them, can tell you that now, Professor.

“Is that who you were fighting then?” Yaz asked.

“Na, IMC mercenaries, mostly, but we have them on the run. IMC got the Syndicate in to push Soma on the locals, got whole farming communities wasted and addicted. Like the British did, remember when we were in Shanghai back in the nineteenth century? The possessed Homulcus from the 50th century? Those creepy zombie things? Everyone around us wasted on Opium, that British jerk getting in our way?”

“Far longer ago for me Ace. All I want to do is stop them taking children, not take on a huge organisation.” She turned to her new companions, “That would be like trying to stop the Mafia in the 17th century, too much time would be re-written. But they don’t often people traffic, do they?”

Ace snorted! “They’re a criminal organisation, but yeah, trafficking kids isn’t really their style, at least not in the centuries I’ve seen them. Adult women, sometimes men and non-binary beings, but not kids! Never kids, not when I’ve been! So, why come get me after all these centuries not bothering me then, and what do you want me to do?”

The Doctor looked at her feet, then rubbed her hair, and looked up at Ace and smiled madly, “Take over! I’m sort of at a loss, really, no obvious monster or evil leader to go after, charity workers and poor children are not really my area, and although Yaz had done a brilliant job, we’re… well, all we’ve figured out it is the Syndicate and the Union is looking the other way, maybe deliberately due to bribes, but probably because they are too busy with other things. I’d thought maybe they were going to be turned into food, or raw resources for some robot army, but I’ve eliminated those. It looks like they are being taken for more… um… Just, help Ace!”

“Take me to a big city on Orion, take me to the Syndicate’s home, in 2010, and go back to where you were in 2012, I’ll infiltrate them, okay?”

The Doctor took a deep breath and sighed dramatically, “Oh Ace, I had hoped you’d offer that. But two years? That’s a long time?”

“Na, not really, and the first kids went missing 2 years ago, even if the most went missing from six months, and I have to get recruited and work my way up. I need more coffee, and a crash course in this Orion Union, the Syndicate at that time – gonna be way different to operating in the 30th century of the Earth Empire, I bet the leaders will be Orion, not like the human ones I just was fighting.”

  
*

  
Ace spent the best part of a month hovering around a club, her funds running out, hustling and gaming to keep body and soul, and spent a lot of time drinking the local spirits while standing by the end of the bar watching the women dancers move seductively on their little circular stages throughout the bar. There was something hypnotic and powerfully sexy about those Orion women. To anyone who asked, she faked drunk anger at the presumption she was from Sto, and told a sad and believable story about being swept up into space and all these species and tech after finding a crashed spaceship on Earth. She travelled with her fictional Andorian trader, until he became bored with her, or his wife found out, she varied the story, and he abandoned her on this city, light years from home with no way back. She made herself indispensable with throwing out the aggressive drunks who ignored the ‘look don’t touch’ policy with the dancers. If they wanted to touch there were other women, upstairs, guarded by a very fat dark green bouncer. Over the past few weeks, Ace had come to realise that although Orions were green, they came in shades of green, and had different shaped faces and noses, as if, once upon a time, millennia ago, there had been different ‘races’ who had evolved from different environments, just like on Earth. 

So far all she had got was free food and drink, and the thanks of the bouncers, pushers, and barmen, and the smiles from the pretty women. After three and a half weeks, she tried to ask for a job, approaching Morok, the very large man with pale jade green skin, who sat in the corner, smoking pungent Spice in a thing that looked all the world like a hookah.

“Alright?” she said, coming up to his table.

“Ace?” He looked up from his tablet and faked a smile, baring his teeth

“You know I’m a bit handy, right, with the punters when they get out of order?” she began breezily.

“Indeed, Frau Ace, you have been very helpful. Do you perhaps wish… some help in return?”

“Funds might be getting a bit low, you know,” she said, nonchalantly, shrugging. “And, it’s just Ace.”

“Then please to sit down, Just Ace, I might be able to return the favours you have been bestowing upon us. But first, you must tell me if the rumours are true?”

“What’s that, then?” Ace asked, sitting down opposite him, smiling her best inscrutable but completely innocent Mona Lisa smile at him across the table.

“Are you a savage, a primitive alien, from Earth?”

“Well, you know, I don’t like the word primitive, you know. Earth would have the technology to be out here, too, if it wasn’t for all the politics and obsessions with nations and wars and profits and all that… yeah, okay, you got me, Earth is primitive.”

“And violent?”

“Well, sometimes, not all humans...”

“You seem quite handy yourself, Just Ace.”

“It’s Ace, just Ace, as in only Ace, is my translator not working?”

“You have an implant? Is that common with Earthlings? I thought they were split among themselves with hundreds of languages?”

“I got it with the guy I travelled with. Terel. Not his real name, I couldn’t say his Andorian name, but it was what he used to trade with, in and out of the Union.”

“A smuggler?”

“Might have been, why?”

“The… Organisation who employ me, who own this club and the women, they don’t like operators smuggling without their say so.”

“Well, maybe he was was going against your employers, whoever they are. Dunno. He got bored of his exotic Earth pet and dumped me after a few weeks. All I can tell you is he was Andorian, he called himself Terel, and his ship was called The Opal Star, Cargo Cruiser class.” She shrugged again. If he checked, the Doctor would have by now registered him into the Andorian and the Union records of everything, birth, school, ship registration, crash into asteroid in a mining belt coming out of hyperspace with the wrong tangential calculations, causing immediate death, a few days after he was supposed to have dumped her here in Sheim on Orion…

“But how did you find yourself with him, off Earth?”

“He’d crashed, hadn’t he? I was in Iraq, doing protection in the Green Zone – that’s a safe zone for the rich country big wigs in a war zone, getting rich off others suffering.” Ace shrugged. “I was paid to guard the families. Easy work, grunt work.”

“You were a soldier?”

“More… freelance.”

“A mercenary?”

“If you like. Anyway, like I said, we were running in a convoy, looking out for IEDs and snipers, when something comes screaming across the sky and smashing in a fireball. Commander sends me to take a look, putting all the kids and civvies into one armed truck, as at the same time, some insurgents come out of the smashed up farm buildings. I assumed it a crashed friendly plane, maybe a drone.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Na, an escape pod. Ship had come further down, in the desert. He was bleeding, ‘cept it was blue, and he had this blue skin and things on his head that moved, as he whimpered. But I got my medkit out and patched him up. When I got back to the convoy, it was a smoking heap. Couldn’t see the armoured truck with the kids, but didn’t know if they got away or had been kidnapped. What idiot brings their children to a war zone, mad, right? Well, Terel was in a bad way, but there was enough to patch up one of the jeeps, and I salvaged all the water, food, and arms I could, and we set out across the desert – he had a tracker. Once he was well enough to think, he injected me with the translator, so we could talk. Nothing for me on Earth, I asked to go with him. Soon as he was well, he decided I was a bad idea, ‘specially when his wife came on board here, in Sheim, or rather, up in Phantasm Station up there,” Ace indicated above them, where one of Orion’s many space docks was in geostationary low orbit above the huge city of Sheim.

“Were you lovers?”

Ace snorted, “Do me a favour! His wife was mega possessive though, and didn’t trust me, called me an animal, alien animal! Said I was worse than an Orion – no offence!”

“None taken, I assure you, many of us get fat and rich on the belief that Orion slave women are incredibly sexual.”

“Is it true then?”

Morok laughed. “When you are a slave, you are want your owner wants you to be.”

Inside Ace wanted to smash the toe rag right in the face there and then, but instead, she just laughed, “I guess,” she said.

“I will check your story, but if it does check out, and if your DNA proves to be Terran, I might have something for you. I will need to make a recommendation to my boss.”

“What something?”

“A lieutenant for the...” Morok lowered his voice, eyes sweeping the bar, and leant forward across the table, “Syndicate.”

“That’s cool, I can do that. Pretty much what I was doing on Earth.”

“I thought so. Now, Ace, we have some illicit Terran delicacies, I can offer you tea, or coffee, or wine?”

“Coffee, ta. I have missed coffee! How the hell do you have coffee?”

“You will have to wait to find that out, even if you ever do. I am not quite sure how the Syndicate gets it all, but I do believe most of it is for Trion markets outside.”

“Trion? Not heard of them, they a colony of yours? Or a planet in the Union I’ve not heard of?”

“Oh, they are not in the Union. Tigi!” he suddenly yelled, calling over the barman. The skinny dark green young man jumped, and scuttled over quickly. “Some coffee for Ace, a pot of it, and also, get a DNA kit.”

Tigi bowed, and rushed off. Morok looked at Ace, to see if she was worried at what the DNA would reveal. She seemed completely relaxed. He hoped the Syndicate local boss would approve her, she would be an asset to the Trion sales, he was sure.

  
*

Three days later Morok and his bodyguard, a surly dark green man, nearly seven foot tall and solid muscle, dressed in black leather, and his gun proudly on display in a bejewelled holster, stood at the door of the tiny tenement room she had rented in a less than salubrious part of the city. It was on the 97th floor, and had a window with a view over the ship dockyards, but it was above the pollution, and there were takeaway and grocery stores on the 90th, along with a small indoor garden, so she could have found worse.

“Yeah?” she called out through the spyhole. She was just in sleep shorts and her bra, her hair tumbled over one shoulder, wrapped in her quilt against the cold.

“Your DNA and trader check out. Sorry to tell you, but Terel’s dead, it’s why he never came back for you.”

Ace grabbed a tee shirt and pulled it on, then opened the door. “Nah, never expected him to come back. Sad about him dying. How?”

“Crashed in an asteroid belt, apparently.”

“Poor sod. Not his wife, too, she was gonna hang around, annoyed by me. Paranoid old cow, but hope she’s okay?”

“They were both in the ship. Sorry. Now, get dressed, that opportunity you wanted, it’s time to meet your future employer. If she likes you, you’ve got a job.”

“Cool. Mind waiting while I get dressed?”

Ace quickly pulled on her old Kevlar suit, and Dalek killer boots, and then braided her hair neatly, and pulled on her very old bomber jacket with the badges, her only thing left of her old life pre Doctor, pre Iceworld, pre space. She opened the door and grinned at them. “I’m ready then.”

They stood in awkward silence in the lift, the bodyguard scowling, Morok scrolling through his tablet. There was an aircar waiting outside, the chauffeur standing guard with his weapon held causally, like a tool he was not afraid to use if any of the poor kids dared to graffiti or disassemble. He stood back and opened the hatchway by remote, and Morok and his bodyguard climbed in and sat in the direction of travel, leaving Ace to choose whether to sit between them or pull down the backwards seat.

“Restraints,” growled the driver, as he climbed into the pilot seat and closed the doors. He powered up too fast and they rose into the skies with such rapid acceleration as Ace was still fastening her safety harness, and she left her stomach somewhere down on the Projects floor. There was a reinforced transparent aluminium square of floor between her and the main seats

“Wicked,” she whispered to herself.

  
*

  
They flew rapidly for over an hour, passing over the city and out into the countryside, lush, verdant grasslands and fields of herd animals of a type Ace did not recognise but was sure had been in her takeaway meals and bar meals, and then forests, covering gently rolling hills. Eventually a huge red brick building came into view, hidden among the forests, atop an isolated hill. The architecture was something Medieval, with Gothic and Classical flourishes, if they had been on Earth, with lawns and blue pools laid out behind it.

They landed quickly, Ace’s stomach left somewhere a few metres above. She climbed out, trying not to retch. As soon as she was out, the aircar launched again, leaving her. A tall, thin, figure approached her, a dark skinned Sto man.

“Frau Ace?” he asked with deference, his voice rich and posh to Ace’s ears.

“Yep, that’s me.”

“Follow.” She followed him in silence to the large metal studded wooden doors, and they entered a white marble hallway, a circular staircase leading upwards, the walls covered in Artworks from all over the Union, and perhaps beyond? She could have sworn one painting looked like a Klimpt, the abstract human forms, the sumptuous gold and colouring, made her thing of him. A statute of an Orion women dancing, head thrown back, hair laying down her back, body twisted, of black and green marble, stood under the first arc of the ornate, wide, staircase.

“Are you armed?” the butler asked politely, but Ace could sense a little threat and menace behind his politeness, his own hand hovered over his own weapon as he asked. Ace had decided he was, in face, the butler, with his neat black coveralls, despite his being armed.

Ace merely nodded handed her guns from her holster and backpack, but kept silent about her boot-knife.

“The Lady Zhiggo will see you now, please follow.”

They went up the grand staircase for three flights, then along an equally grand mahogany, or Orion's equivalent, panel lined corridor, and then into a roof garden. At the end was an aviary, and birds were trilling happily. A large, traditionally built, older Orion woman was laid across a red, over stuffed, chaise lounge, a table in front of her covered in a white lace cloth and laid out with fruit and cake and a carafe or wine and a pot of tea. What looked like a Stigorax puppy was curled up at the end of the lounger, by her feet, chewing on a rubber bone. Ace couldn’t help think of Helen A and Fifi for a moment. Parallel evolution, she wondered. Terra Alpha was two galaxies away, she thought, and not one planet in or allied with the Union had inter-galactic technology, she believed. Still, she patted the puppy gingerly to show good faith, which pleased her host, who grinned, showing sharpened teeth, which apparently had been fashionable about 60 years ago on Orion she had learnt a few weeks ago. The ‘butler’ bowed in front of his employer, and then stood silently behind the chaise lounge.

“Please, sit Ace,” the woman, the Lady Zhiggo, the godmother or whatever she was, said, indicating the wicker chair opposite her, the opposite side of the table. 

Ace sat.

“What can I offer you? Green tea or sherry?”

Ace tried not to explode at the sherry, an old ladies drink still… “I’ll have tea, thanks. Sugar, if it's going.”

“Jevon? If you will.”

The Sto butler poured her tea in delicate bone China, and from the willow pattern, Ace was sure it was from Earth.

“Thanks Jevon,” Ace said, as he handed her the cup and saucer.

“You may leave us, Jevon. Help yourself to whatever you wish to eat, Ace dear.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“But I believe you had had no breakfast yet?”

“Tea is fine for now, my Lady?”

“What lovely manners!” she tittered. “Now, to business,” her voice changed, to a harsher quality. “I am the grand master of Sheim, and the spacedocks above, a small but significant role. Your story and your species has checked out, and I believe you wish for a job?”

“Please, yeah.”

“Morok tells me how useful you have been, evicting the more enthusiastic drunks, shall we say?”

“I just protected the dancers when some sleazeballs got fresh, it’s not like the dancers were offering anything else, was it?”

“No. Now, I have spoke to a colleague, and a superior, and we feel we might have a role for you – we have some very beautiful women we sell to the highest of the high in the Union, and usually we use the eunuchs as their minders...”

Ace thought about the men who minded the women upstairs at her own hangout – fat, soft, high voiced. Eunuch would explain it. How barbaric, she decided.

“Do you think that is work you would be interested in? Or is it beneath you?”

“Bodyguarding is something I’ve done on Earth, so yeah, I can do that.”

“Of course, there is always opportunity for improvement and movement in our organisation, especially for someone who has such useful inside knowledge of Earth.”

“Earth?”

“Where do you think your tea and cup came from, dear?”

“Oh, right. You moving in on them, even though there is no interstellar treaty yet? I thought they were protected. Mind you, how you – the Syndicate – operate, is like, far far more compatible with Earth economics than the Union in general. Nice one.”

“You would not use us to get home?”

“As I said to Terel, nothing is for me on Earth. It feels so primitive and backward now, I wouldn’t ever wanna go home. Maybe for a visit, with a fast, shielded ship, but I’ve gotta work hard to afford one of those, right?” Ace grinned charmingly.

“Indeed,” the lady smiled back. “You can work hard for us. Morok has recommended you, and by our ancient rules, if you let us down, not only is your life forfeit, so is his and his family to three generations.

 _Shit!_ Ace swallowed. _Better give me a believable exit, Doctor_ , she thought. But she stood and held out her hand across the table and smiled, “Deal, my Lady.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Temporary note:  
> I'm sorry to put this fic on hiatus for the time being. I usually find writing rape recovery fics helpful, but atm, RL is giving me triggers, and I am not able to work on this fic or watch Law and Order: SVU currently. As soon as I'm in a better place, I will return to this fic. The next chapter is already half written, and the rest plotted out, so once I can cope it won't take me long :)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so to fit these two universes together, Dick Wolf’s rather extensive verse as well as the huge Doctor Who one, I realised I needed to make up some head canons to explain somethings away to make sense in my mind (‘there’s so much confusion in my mind!’ – Resurrection of the Daleks quote btw). So:  
> In London, Graham O’Brien has a cousin who works for the Met, called DS Ronnie Brookes, who looks very like him indeed.  
> Dr Martha Jones already had a cousin who looked identical to her who worked for Torchwood One and was sadly Cyber-converted, so I decided her Dad, who was already a bit of a idiot player with women with his new young girlfriend in canon, had had a fling while his wife with pregnant with Martha, and the result was her unknown half-sister, Alesha Phillips, who despite not having all that middle class privilege as Martha, and growing up in a single parent housebound in a council tower block in London, still grew up to be an awesome barrister.  
> Like Salamander, and others throughout time and space and various regenerations, Henry Sharpe is a dead reckoning double for the Doctor’s fifth incarnation. Mere coincidence.  
> Meanwhile, over in New York, for reasons known only to herself which I probably will never explore in a fan fic (but you never know! Feel free to do so if the idea inspires you) River Song is practising law for a while during 2008-2010, calling herself Miranda (not Melody!) Pond.
> 
> And while I’m making notes and explanations – can I say that X-Files and Men in Black are referenced in this, and I do not own them anymore than I do Law and Order: Special Victims Unit of Doctor Who, but I did not think it worth tagging them as they really are just kind of side references to Munch.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Orion Union, 18th-21st centuries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171337) by [asparagusmama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama)




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